


Boyhood and Baseball

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Baseball, Best Friends, Broken Bones, Childhood Friends, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Holding Hands, Hospitalization, Light Angst, Living Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-03-26 13:10:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 27,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3852154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'Aww,' Yamamoto says, and even now his smile is clinging to the corners of his mouth, lighting his eyes up until the hazel turns almost gold in the sunlight. 'But we’re friends, I can’t use your last name.'" Gokudera isn't expecting his best friend to drop out of a tree his first week in Japan, but sometimes life just works out that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Familiarity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shiny_Pichu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiny_Pichu/gifts).



The first thing Gokudera thinks is that the sound is a bird.

It’s a weird sound for a bird to make. Really there’s nothing for it but a human voice calling out a greeting. But when he hears the noise it’s high up, nearly directly overhead, and in the first startled surprise it’s a bird he thinks of first.

Then he looks up, his reflexes drawing his sight up and his feet still, and it’s a person after all, and the sound becomes “Hello!” in his mind.

Gokudera doesn’t answer right away. He’s too busy staring at the boy perched on the branch of the tree overhead, his smile wide and bright and nicer than any of those Gokudera has seen since his arrival in Japan a week ago. For all that he looks friendly he is in a tree, though, his position confusing enough that Gokudera is starting to frown as the boy lifts a hand to wave at him.

“Hi,” he calls down again, swinging his legs like he’s not afraid of falling in spite of how high up he is, higher even than the edge of the wall around the outside of Gokudera’s new house. “Are you new?”

“Are you in a  _tree_?” Gokudera asks, the words coming too fast with curious confusion for him to hear them before they’re spoken.

There’s a laugh from above, the sound falling like rain from the cloudless sky, and the boy moves, leans sideways to press his hands to the branch he’s sitting on. Gokudera just stares from his position on the ground, startled into a shout when the figure above drops to catch himself with his hold on the branch, swinging from his arms a moment before he lets go to fall the last few feet to the ground.

He seems smaller when he stands on the sidewalk, only a little taller than Gokudera and skinny with it, his dark hair ruffled all over his head like he’s never bothered to comb it and his clothes dusty from his climb in the tree. He seems a little older than he first looked, too, close enough to be in third grade with Gokudera at the school he’s going to start at in a few days.

“You live right there, right?” the boy says, pointing in the general direction of Gokudera’s house. Gokudera glances back -- it’s still in sight, he’s stayed close like Bianchi told him too -- and he nods as he looks back at the other boy’s extended arm, the tan of his skin from sunshine that has only ever burned Gokudera.

“I’m around the corner.” Another extended arm, the other direction this time, dropped as quickly as it came up. “At the sushi place. Did you just move here?”

“Yeah,” Gokudera says without moving towards or away this talkative boy. He looks friendly, his smile spreading all across his face like he doesn’t know how to hold it back, but Gokudera’s still a little confused by the sudden appearance of the other, still a little lost in this conversation. “From Italy.”

“Ohh,” the boy says, sounding starstruck and thrilled. “Is that why your hair is that color?”

Gokudera lifts a hand to the weight of silver hair against the back of his neck, starts to flush in expectation of something worse to follow, maybe a more direct version of the half-frightened stares he’s gotten since he arrived here.

“It just  _is_  this color,” he snaps, taking a step back and thinking about running, retreating to the safety of the house that isn’t a home yet but at least has the security of loneliness.

“It’s super cool,” the other says, and Gokudera goes still, uncertain about this unexpected reaction. There’s no movement from the strange boy, just that smile on his mouth and bright eyes fixed on Gokudera’s face, not even the reaching fingers to invade Gokudera’s personal space like everyone else who has been intrigued by the pale color of his hair. Gokudera’s still staring when the other boy blinks his attention back to Gokudera’s eyes, laughs so bright and warm Gokudera nearly jumps.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. His hand is moving but it’s just to offer towards the other, his fingers relaxed into the shape of a handshake. “I’m Yamamoto Takeshi.”

Gokudera frowns at the gesture, looks back up at the ease of the smile before he can get himself to move. It’s weird to shake hands with a kid, when he’s only ever endured the too-firm grip of adults after one of his piano recitals when he was too ill to offer any kind of a hold in return. Yamamoto’s hand is smaller than the adults’, fits better against Gokudera’s, and when he tightens his fingers it’s lighter, like he’s holding a bird against his palm before gently moving his hand up and down, an imitation of a motion instead of true familiarity.

“Gokudera Hayato,” Gokudera says, polite response drilled so deep into him that he doesn’t think twice about offering his name in spite of the frown of uncertainty still at his lips.

“That’s a nice name!” Yamamoto chirps. His hand is still against Gokudera’s, fingers still curled in against the other boy’s wrist. “Can I call you Hayato?”

“What?” Gokudera snatches his hand back, dragging himself free of the other hold with more force than it needs. “We’ve barely met.”

“Aww,” Yamamoto says, and even now his smile is clinging to the corners of his mouth, lighting his eyes up until the hazel turns almost gold in the sunlight. “But we’re friends, I can’t use your last name.”

“ _What_?” Gokudera’s frown deepens, his forehead going tight with confusion. “Wh--we’re not friends!”

“Why not?” Yamamoto asks.

Gokudera can’t tell if he’s being teased or not. He’s suspicious that he’s being made fun of, that there’s an edge under the other boy’s smile, but he can’t see one, can’t see the flicker in the other’s eyes that should be a giveaway for the cruelty he hasn’t yet shown a trace of.

“Fine,” he snaps, folding his arms over his chest. “We’re friends,  _Mo-chan_.”

He’s trying to be insulting. It’s the best he can manage, under the circumstances, reaching for everything he knows about his second language and forming the most sugar-sweet nickname he can come up with. But Yamamoto’s smile blossoms out all over his face, turning his eyes up into dark-lashed crescents, and Gokudera realizes he may have just accidentally made a new best friend without at all meaning to.


	2. Competitive

Gokudera is looking deeply confused.

“But you have to tag the base you just left before you go on,” he says, like he’s struggling to recall the information.

“Only if the ball is caught before it touches the ground,” Yamamoto says. “Otherwise you can just keep running on to the next one.”

It’s almost funny, the way Gokudera’s expression falls into frustration. “Who came up with these rules?” he grumbles as they pause in front of the fence to the practice field so Yamamoto can drag the gate open. “This game is way too complicated for anyone to play.”

“It makes more sense when you’re playing,” Yamamoto reassures him, stepping out of the way so Gokudera can step through first and he can tug it shut behind them. “Someone smart like you can learn it really fast!”

“Tch,” Gokudera huffs, but he’s ducking his head to cover his smile, coloring pink like he’s burning in the sun. “Well, if an idiot like you can learn this stupid game I’m sure anyone can.”

“That’s right!” Yamamoto takes the lead again, half-jogging while Gokudera follows in his wake. By the time the other boy has caught up to him at the bench Yamamoto has the equipment he brought with them laid out for consideration, is ready and waiting with a smile when Gokudera stops to look at his options.

“We can’t play a real game with just two of us,” Yamamoto says, watching the shine of the sunlight off Gokudera’s white-silver hair. “But you could throw to me, or I could pitch to you and you could try the bat if you want.”

“Mm,” Gokudera hums. When he reaches out his hold on the bat is tentative, his fingers curling carefully around the grip worn soft by the press of Yamamoto’s palms. “Woah, this is kind of heavy.”

“Yeah.” Yamamoto feels bubbly, like the way the sun makes him feel on the first bright day after winter or the excitement of waking up on the morning of his birthday. “It’s so you can hit the ball really hard. I bet you could get a home run, Hayato!”

Gokudera rolls his eyes. “Don’t be stupid, Mo-chan, I don’t even know the rules yet.” But his grip on the bat is firmer, more confident, and after a moment he lifts the bat to his shoulder and looks out over the field, looking like a real player for a minute.

“You’re gonna be so great,” Yamamoto says, awed by the way Gokudera’s hair catches at his shoulders and the way his green eyes make him look intense and focused. “I bet we can join the baseball club in junior high together!”

“Shut up,” Gokudera insists. “I haven’t even tried yet,” but he’s smiling again, ducking under his hair like he does, and Yamamoto grins wide at him before he picks up a glove and a ball and takes the lead out to the diamond itself.

There’s nothing all that special about this field in particular; it’s just the main practice field for the junior high they’ll be attending next year, only unused because the club is out at a training camp right now. But Yamamoto loves coming out here whenever he can, loves the way the dust kicks up rich and dark under his feet, loves how wide the diamond looks from the middle of the field instead of from up in the stands. He gets distracted by it for a moment, breathing in the smell of the dirt and the grass in the outfield, tipping his head back to gaze up at the clear blue sky over them, and it’s not until a sharply familiar “Mo-chan” makes it to his ears that he blinks back into the present and looks back at Gokudera standing awkwardly shy of home plate.

“If you wanted to just stare at the sky we could have stayed at home,” Gokudera growls.

Yamamoto laughs an apology, shakes his head as a no. “You want to try batting a little?”

Gokudera goes red, his mouth dropping into a frown. “Well,” he hesitates, his gaze sliding off Yamamoto’s and the line of his shoulders slumping a little. “You wanted to play, didn’t you?”

“Yeah!” Yamamoto agrees, stepping forward in the first rush of excitement. “It’ll be fun!”

Gokudera rolls his eyes. “Whatever,” is what he says, but his shoulders straighten a little, and when he takes a step forward it’s more confident. “You just throw the ball and I hit it, right?”

“Yep.” Yamamoto backs up again, most of the distance back to the pitcher’s mound. The ball is heavy against his hand, fits in against the calluses at his fingers like it was shaped to sit there. “You ready?”

Gokudera tosses his hair back, leans forward into a crouch as his hands tighten on the handle of the bat. “Bring it on, Mo-chan.”

Yamamoto laughs again. It’s hard not to, when he feels so warm and thrilled just from the situation. “Okay, you asked for it!”

He hasn’t warmed up his arm at all yet, so he’s careful with the first throw, keeps it gentle for the sake of his shoulder as much as on Gokudera’s behalf. Yamamoto can see the arc of the ball through the air, can almost see the turn of the seams in the leather as it spins towards the other boy. Gokudera’s forehead creases, he swings hard -- and the ball hits the ground behind him, not even clipped by the wild motion that brought Gokudera stumbling forward and off-balance.

“Shit!” Gokudera curses, swinging the bat back as he regains his footing. His shoulders are slumping again, his frown going deeper and darker like he’s thinking about stopping entirely.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” Yamamoto calls, quick, to offset the irritation carving itself into Gokudera’s expression. He jogs forward to pick the ball back up himself, tosses it into his mitt while Gokudera glares at him with the bat still hanging uncertainly at his side. “It was a bad throw, I’m not warmed up yet.”

“Huh,” Gokudera huffs, but he’s starting to smile again, tips his head back to shake his hair away as he lifts the bat again. “Don’t take it easy on me cause you think you’re better than I am.”

“Haha, okay,” Yamamoto agrees, scuffs his way back out to his original location. When he turns back around Gokudera has the bat back over his shoulder, is glaring at the ball in Yamamoto’s hand like it’s personally offended him. Yamamoto holds it up for a moment, grinning when Gokudera scoffs, then winds up slow and careful to toss it for the other boy again.

It’s another complete miss. Yamamoto winces at Gokudera’s growl, comes jogging in quick so he can catch the bat before Gokudera has a chance to throw it in frustration.

“It’s hard to do,” he soothes. “It’ll get easier, I promise.”

“Stupid,” Gokudera huffs, folds his arms over his chest. “I can’t even see the dumb ball when I start swinging.”

“Aww.” Yamamoto reaches out to push Gokudera’s hair back from his face. “It’s cause your hair’s getting in the way. Bet it’d be easier if you tied it back.”

Gokudera rolls his eyes but doesn’t smack Yamamoto’s hand away. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he sighs.

“Just try it,” Yamamoto pleads. “Just one swing, it’ll only take a minute.”

Gokudera sighs heavily. “Fine.” He unfolds his arms, twists one of the hairties perpetually looped around his wrist free, and begins to collect the silver strands back into a messy ponytail. “But it’s not going to help.”

“You never know till you try!” Yamamoto points out.

With his hair tied back Gokudera’s glare is a lot more obvious. It makes Yamamoto grin, keeps him smiling as he offers the bat for Gokudera to seize from his hand before he picks up the ball and returns once more to the middle of the field.

“You got this,” he calls to Gokudera. “Just keep your eye on the ball as it comes in.”

“Just throw it, baseball idiot,” Gokudera shouts back, his shoulders drawing tense with anticipation, and Yamamoto laughs and does as he’s told.

The swing looks the same as the first two at first, a desperate arc of the bat through the air that looks too reckless to be successful. But Gokudera’s head is turned this time, his glare fixed on the ball instead of on Yamamoto, and when Yamamoto hears the crack of the bat connecting it’s only reflex that gets him to duck in time for the ball to arc over his head instead of flying straight into his shoulder.

“Oh wow,” he says, turning to watch it fly into the unoccupied outfield. “Wow, Hayato, you’re really good!”

“Oh,” Gokudera says. When Yamamoto turns back he’s staring after the arc of the ball, eyes wide and shocked and his expression blank with the surprise Yamamoto almost never sees.

Yamamoto grins, adrenaline and delight rushing through him in equal amounts, and then he shouts, “Run, you have to run!”

“Huh?” Gokudera blinks, his attention coming back to Yamamoto’s face. “What?”

“Run around the bases!” Yamamoto is jogging backwards as he speaks, turning to head towards the outfield. “Quick, before I tag you!”

“Oh,” Gokudera says again, and then he throws the bat aside and Yamamoto can’t watch him anymore because he’s sprinting towards the fallen ball as fast as he can run. There’s the patter of footsteps behind him, Gokudera rounding the bases with a speed born more of enthusiasm than experience, until as Yamamoto turns back he has time to see the other skid and fall in an effort to pivot too sharply around second. Yamamoto has the advantage of his longer legs on his way back in but Gokudera is back on his feet, all-out sprinting, now, his competitiveness winning out over the effort of exertion, until he’s coming up on home as fast as Yamamoto clears the pitcher’s mound and sprints in towards the white shape. Gokudera’s running too fast, Yamamoto can see his feet kicking up clouds of dust in slow-motion, and there’s just time to see his sneaker kick against the home plate before Yamamoto tries to stop, and fails, and runs straight into the other boy.

Gokudera shouts wordless protest as they fall, Yamamoto twisting so he lands as much on the ground as on Gokudera. There’s a burst of dirt from their collision and the subsequent fall, until Gokudera is coughing and Yamamoto is blinking dust from his eyes as they sit back up.

“Woah,” Yamamoto says, breathless with the exhilaration of competition. “You’re really fast.”

Gokudera scoffs, waves a hand in front of his face to clear away some of the dust. “You’re just a slowpoke, Mo-chan.”

Yamamoto grins at the gentle insult. “You got a point for Team Hayato,” he says. “But Team Baseball is gonna win in the end.”

“Team Hayato?” Gokudera protests. “That’s a stupid name, why do you get the cool team?”

“You’re captain,” Yamamoto points out. “You can rename it whatever you want.”

“Fine.” Gokudera tosses his head. “Then I’ll be Team Dynamite. I’m gonna blow your stupid team away.”

“Ha, you can try,” Yamamoto teases. Gokudera gets to his feet and Yamamoto tosses the ball up to him. “Maybe you’ll be a great pitcher too!”

It’s hours before they’re ready to head back, when Gokudera is finally so exhausted he can’t walk in a straight line and promising revenge on Team Baseball, who did in fact win by three points at the end of the day. Yamamoto’s shoulder aches, and his arms feel like jelly from swinging the bat far more than he ever has before, but he can’t stop grinning, and on the way back Gokudera makes him explain the rules of a real game all over again, in great detail, with the crease in his forehead of concentration instead of frustration this time.

Yamamoto is pretty sure this was the best idea he’s ever had.


	3. Coordinated

They don’t discuss the baseball club at all. Not on the walk to their new school, stiff and awkward with all the excitement of being middle schoolers at last, not when they find out their class assignments -- the same, a surprise given that Gokudera has seen what passes for studying for Yamamoto -- not during the lunch break that comes sooner than Gokudera is expecting. Even when they’re handed their club enrollment forms, Gokudera doesn’t look back to catch Yamamoto’s eye, though he can feel the other boy’s gaze catch warm at the back of his neck. He doesn’t need to share a pointed look to know what they’ll do as soon as class is over.

He’s not wrong either. Yamamoto waits for him, collects his things and lurks by the edge of Gokudera’s desk while the other shoves his books haphazardly into his bag, and when they leave it’s to head straight for Yamamoto’s house while talking about their new teacher, and the lunch offerings in the cafeteria, and any number of other topics besides the forms weighting down both their bags.

Going back to Yamamoto’s home isn’t unusual in and of itself. It’s a habit years in the making, Bianchi’s late work hours and terrible cooking combining to make Yamamoto’s room the far preferred location for after-school studying or video games. But usually they’ll linger in the kitchen, Yamamoto chatting with his dad while Gokudera eats everything offered to him, and this time they both retreat straight to Yamamoto’s room with only a brief pause by the kitchen to collect a snack in the form of a plate of sushi Yamamoto’s father left out.

Yamamoto sets the plate down on the table in the middle of his room, and Gokudera sits on his usual side, taking the first bite of sushi while Yamamoto sheds his jacket and rummages through the jumble in his school bag for his form.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Gokudera insists, even as he retrieves his own from the inside of the textbook where he slid it to keep it safe from the mess of the rest of his bag. “It’s just an enrollment form for the club, after all.”

“It’s so exciting though,” Yamamoto insists. He pushes the sushi to the corner of the table to make space for their paired forms on the other edge, lying his so the corner overlaps with Gokudera’s. They’re identical, except for the careless wrinkles Yamamoto’s has collected compared to Gokudera’s, and Gokudera has a brief rush of adrenaline at the grown-up feeling of joining a club, the way Yamamoto has always talked about them doing.

“Do you need a pen?” he asks instead, reaching out for his own.

Yamamoto laughs instead of answering, and Gokudera grumbles wordlessly and holds out one of a pair he has fished out of his bag. Then they’re both leaning in over their forms to fill in the blank spaces, so close over the corner of the table their hair catches together when Yamamoto leans in to brace himself on the table like he always does when he’s writing.

It’s not a hard form to complete. The only part that Gokudera hesitates over at all is the “Preferred Position” line, and even then it’s only for a breath before he sighs and fills in his answer he knew he’d give. Yamamoto is done first, sitting back over his heels and all but bouncing in anticipation as Gokudera sets his pen down.  
“What did you put down?” he asks, leaning in without waiting for permission.

“Hey,” Gokudera protests, but the sound lacks any real fire. “Get out of my face, idiot.” He shoves his form at Yamamoto, slides the other towards himself in exchange. “See for yourself, if you’re so desperate to know.”

He knew what Yamamoto would fill in. It’s no surprise to see “Pitcher” written in Yamamoto’s rushed handwriting, and that  means it’s no surprise either when Yamamoto makes a sound of delight that is in truth more a chirp than anything else.

“Catcher, really?” When Gokudera looks up Yamamoto is blinking at him, smiling all over his face and eyes wide and shining. “Maybe we can play together as a battery!”

Gokudera huffs, rolls his eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” he says, snatching his form back as if the idea had never occurred to him, as if that weren’t precisely why he chose this position in the first place. “If one of us makes first string and the other doesn’t we won’t play together at all. And maybe you won’t even get to be a pitcher, maybe they’ll have someone who’s actually any good instead of having to rely on you, Mo-chan.”

“Aww, don’t be mean,” Yamamoto smiles. “I think we’d make a great team.”

“Of course,” Gokudera declares, tossing his head and looking at Yamamoto sideways. “Because I’m good enough to make up for all your shortcomings.”

The insult just makes Yamamoto laugh, the way Gokudera knew it would, and the other’s amusement catches contagious at his mouth, pulls an unwilling smile to his lips. It also ends the line of conversation; they focus on the sushi instead, only Gokudera’s foresight in claiming both forms and putting them back in his bag saving them from a mishap with the soy sauce.

After they’re finished Gokudera doesn’t protest when Yamamoto wants to turn on a game for one of the ongoing professional tournaments, even though they have homework they probably should be working on; he just helps the other boy push the table out of the way so they can both lean against the edge of Yamamoto’s bed and watch together.

He’s never really thought about being a professional baseball player before. But with the completed enrollment forms in his bag and Yamamoto humming with happiness next to him, Gokudera lets himself imagine a future of base-marked diamonds and cheers from the stands, the smooth of a mitt over his hand and the weight of Yamamoto’s pitch smacking into his palm.

The thought makes him smile.

They don’t discuss the baseball club at all. Not on the walk to their new school, stiff and awkward with all the excitement of being middle schoolers at last, not when they find out their class assignments -- the same, a surprise given that Gokudera has seen what passes for studying for Yamamoto -- not during the lunch break that comes sooner than Gokudera is expecting. Even when they’re handed their club enrollment forms, Gokudera doesn’t look back to catch Yamamoto’s eye, though he can feel the other boy’s gaze catch warm at the back of his neck. He doesn’t need to share a pointed look to know what they’ll do as soon as class is over.

He’s not wrong either. Yamamoto waits for him, collects his things and lurks by the edge of Gokudera’s desk while the other shoves his books haphazardly into his bag, and when they leave it’s to head straight for Yamamoto’s house while talking about their new teacher, and the lunch offerings in the cafeteria, and any number of other topics besides the forms weighting down both their bags.

Going back to Yamamoto’s home isn’t unusual in and of itself. It’s a habit years in the making, Bianchi’s late work hours and terrible cooking combining to make Yamamoto’s room the far preferred location for after-school studying or video games. But usually they’ll linger in the kitchen, Yamamoto chatting with his dad while Gokudera eats everything offered to him, and this time they both retreat straight to Yamamoto’s room with only a brief pause by the kitchen to collect a snack in the form of a plate of sushi Yamamoto’s father left out.

Yamamoto sets the plate down on the table in the middle of his room, and Gokudera sits on his usual side, taking the first bite of sushi while Yamamoto sheds his jacket and rummages through the jumble in his school bag for his form.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Gokudera insists, even as he retrieves his own from the inside of the textbook where he slid it to keep it safe from the mess of the rest of his bag. “It’s just an enrollment form for the club, after all.”

“It’s so exciting though,” Yamamoto insists. He pushes the sushi to the corner of the table to make space for their paired forms on the other edge, lying his so the corner overlaps with Gokudera’s. They’re identical, except for the careless wrinkles Yamamoto’s has collected compared to Gokudera’s, and Gokudera has a brief rush of adrenaline at the grown-up feeling of joining a club, the way Yamamoto has always talked about them doing.

“Do you need a pen?” he asks instead, reaching out for his own.

Yamamoto laughs instead of answering, and Gokudera grumbles wordlessly and holds out one of a pair he has fished out of his bag. Then they’re both leaning in over their forms to fill in the blank spaces, so close over the corner of the table their hair catches together when Yamamoto leans in to brace himself on the table like he always does when he’s writing.

It’s not a hard form to complete. The only part that Gokudera hesitates over at all is the “Preferred Position” line, and even then it’s only for a breath before he sighs and fills in his answer he knew he’d give. Yamamoto is done first, sitting back over his heels and all but bouncing in anticipation as Gokudera sets his pen down.  
“What did you put down?” he asks, leaning in without waiting for permission.

“Hey,” Gokudera protests, but the sound lacks any real fire. “Get out of my face, idiot.” He shoves his form at Yamamoto, slides the other towards himself in exchange. “See for yourself, if you’re so desperate to know.”

He knew what Yamamoto would fill in. It’s no surprise to see “Pitcher” written in Yamamoto’s rushed handwriting, and that  means it’s no surprise either when Yamamoto makes a sound of delight that is in truth more a chirp than anything else.

“Catcher, really?” When Gokudera looks up Yamamoto is blinking at him, smiling all over his face and eyes wide and shining. “Maybe we can play together as a battery!”

Gokudera huffs, rolls his eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” he says, snatching his form back as if the idea had never occurred to him, as if that weren’t precisely why he chose this position in the first place. “If one of us makes first string and the other doesn’t we won’t play together at all. And maybe you won’t even get to be a pitcher, maybe they’ll have someone who’s actually any good instead of having to rely on you, Mo-chan.”

“Aww, don’t be mean,” Yamamoto smiles. “I think we’d make a great team.”

“Of course,” Gokudera declares, tossing his head and looking at Yamamoto sideways. “Because I’m good enough to make up for all your shortcomings.”

The insult just makes Yamamoto laugh, the way Gokudera knew it would, and the other’s amusement catches contagious at his mouth, pulls an unwilling smile to his lips. It also ends the line of conversation; they focus on the sushi instead, only Gokudera’s foresight in claiming both forms and putting them back in his bag saving them from a mishap with the soy sauce.

After they’re finished Gokudera doesn’t protest when Yamamoto wants to turn on a game for one of the ongoing professional tournaments, even though they have homework they probably should be working on; he just helps the other boy push the table out of the way so they can both lean against the edge of Yamamoto’s bed and watch together.

He’s never really thought about being a professional baseball player before. But with the completed enrollment forms in his bag and Yamamoto humming with happiness next to him, Gokudera lets himself imagine a future of base-marked diamonds and cheers from the stands, the smooth of a mitt over his hand and the weight of Yamamoto’s pitch smacking into his palm.

The thought makes him smile.


	4. Dreams

Yamamoto loves the way his uniform feels.

It’s less inherently comfortable than his school clothes, the soft sweater and the white shirt so well-used it’s free of any initial crispness it may have had. The baseball uniforms are clean white, so new they hold the shape of the folds even days after getting them, and the weight of the stitched-in lettering across the front pulls them oddly, makes the line at the shoulders not quite stay where it should for the new members.

Yamamoto likes everything about them. He likes the crackle of the fabric when he moves quickly, likes the way even fingerprints show up dusty on the snowy fabric, likes the way the red of the school name flickers bright as a bird wing in his periphery when he swings his arm. And he likes the way the whole team matches, the way he and Gokudera blend in with the rest of the club members, the way their uniforms mark them as teammates as well as classmates and best friends.

“ _Mo-chan_.” Sharp, that, snapping across the distance to where Gokudera is glaring from behind his catcher’s mask. “If you’re just planning to daydream I could be taking a nap or something.”

“Ah, sorry!” Yamamoto shakes his head to clear the last lingering thoughts, steps back and sets his hand in against the inside seam of his glove so he can steady his grip on the ball. It’s a straightforward throw, just to practice speed and control, but he’s still careful to line his fingers up with the seams, to bring his arm back smoothly as he winds up. Gokudera is still watching him but without the glare, this time, just the clear focus of utter attention, so when Yamamoto swings his arm forward and lets the ball fly free he doesn’t need to hear the  _thud_  of the ball smacking into Gokudera’s mitt to know it’s right where the other wanted it.

“ _Ow_ ,” Gokudera hisses, picking up the ball with his other hand and shaking his wrist out. “That  _hurt_.” He tosses it back, an easy underhand toss Yamamoto can catch bare-handed. “Try going for the top corner this time.”

Yamamoto grins, offers a thumbs-up in response; he doesn’t need to see Gokudera’s expression clearly to know the other is rolling his eyes. The thought holds his smile while he winds up again, the expression lingering as he follows through on the swing, until by the time the coach calls them back at the end of practice he’s been smiling for over an hour without thinking about it at all.

Gokudera groans gratitude as he gets to his feet, stripping off his helmet before they’ve made it all the way back to the dugout. “I think it’ll take an hour of showering to get the sweat off,” he announces as he holds the gear out for Yamamoto’s willing hands, drops the mask for the other to carry while he wipes at his face with the back of his sleeve. “My nose has been itching since your fourth pitch and I couldn’t reach it.”

Yamamoto hums sympathy. Gokudera is flushed with the heat of practice, his hair falling down out of its ponytail only to cling to the damp sweat at the back of his neck and along his hairline. Even when he pulls the tie loose the shape of it lingers until he drags a hand through his hair to shake the strands free.

“This is a lot of work,” he complains as Yamamoto falls into step beside him on their way back to the dugout to drop off their gear. “You definitely owe me for dragging me into this stupid club with you.”

“Okay,” Yamamoto agrees without any hesitation. He’s still smiling, still running high on the hum of joy in his veins, the rush of adrenaline from the satisfaction of pitching straight to Gokudera’s waiting glove. “Anything you want, Hayato, I promise.”

Gokudera glances back at him, raises an eyebrow as the corner of his mouth turns up into a smirk. “You don’t even know what I want yet and you’re making crazy promises? You’re like a little kid still.”

“Well, you joined the baseball team with me,” Yamamoto points out. “That’s the most I’ve ever wanted.”

“That’s  _it_?” Gokudera stops walking, turns on his heel so fast Yamamoto almost runs into him before he can stop. “Middle school baseball? What about going pro?” He’s glaring up from under his hair, eyes narrowed until Yamamoto can’t tell if he’s serious or not. “I thought you had  _dreams_.”

“Oh,” Yamamoto says, smiles bright. “Well, yeah, of course being a professional player with you would be awesome.”

Gokudera rolls his eyes, heaves a sigh. “You have to  _commit_ , Mo-chan.” He tugs the glove off his right hand, offers it in mid-air. “Promise me.”

Yamamoto doesn’t hesitate. He lifts his hand too, fits his palm in against Gokudera’s so they can curl their fingers over the other’s knuckles, tighten their grip to each pull the other closer by an inch.

“We’ll be professionals together,” Gokudera growls, his tone allowing no space for logic or luck in the face of overwhelming resolve. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Yamamoto says, and the words are easy in spite of their weight. “Together, Hayato. I promise.”


	5. Code

Yamamoto is about to get distracted.

Gokudera doesn’t know how he knows this. It’s probably just that it’s been about the right amount of time for the other boy’s attention to have worn thin, some counter in Gokudera’s head giving him warning. Maybe it’s just experience, knowledge of the other learned accidentally over years of proximity, that says that their homework is about to take a backseat to something else, regardless of how complete their worksheets are.

“Hayato,” Yamamoto says, right on cue. When Gokudera glances up through his hair the other is leaning in over the table, grinning bright and innocent like he’s not about to suggest procrastinating their work. “I have an idea.”

“No,” Gokudera says without waiting to hear the other out. “Do your homework.”

“But I’m stuck,” Yamamoto declares. “We should take a break anyway.”

“Then take a break by yourself and be  _quiet_ ,” Gokudera snaps, looking back down at his own half-done worksheet. “At least let me be responsible.”

Yamamoto leans over the edge of the table, peers at Gokudera’s sheet sideways. “You’re almost done anyway.”

Gokudera reaches out without looking, presses his palm to Yamamoto’s face to push him away. “Do you listen to me at all?”

He can feel Yamamoto’s laugh gust warm against his palm, the motion of the other’s mouth as he starts to speak before grabbing at Gokudera’s wrist and pulling his hand away. “But I need your help.”

“I’m not going to do your homework for you,” Gokudera says before Yamamoto can suggest it.

“It’s not about homework,” Yamamoto insists. “We need to make up signals for the baseball team.”

Gokudera wishes he had the fortitude to resist longer. He shouldn’t look up, he  _knows_  he shouldn’t, he should stick to what he’s doing and--

He looks up. Yamamoto is watching him, his eyes wide and smile bright with the not-even-a-little-bit-repressed delight at the prospect of talking about his favorite subject, and Gokudera knows better than to try to push that smile off the other’s face. He groans instead, dragging his hand free of Yamamoto’s hold so he can make a grand show of sweeping his pencil and paper aside to leave the table free.

“ _Fine_.” He uncrosses his legs -- kicking Yamamoto none-too-gently in the process -- and folds his arms to glare at the other. “Let’s get this over with.”

Yamamoto’s smile is blinding bright, always warmer than Gokudera expects it to be. All the attention he failed to bring to his homework is here now, clear in the conspiratorial curve of his shoulders and the full focus of his gaze on Gokudera’s face.

“Okay,” he says, sounding so ecstatic with excitement Gokudera catches himself smiling, too, pleased with secondhand happiness from the joy pouring off Yamamoto. “So. You’ll need to tell me what kind of pitch to throw, and where to throw it.”

“Like you have any control at all,” Gokudera teases, unfairly, because Yamamoto  _has_  been really good at throwing where Gokudera tells him to in practice. “And what kind of pitch? You don’t even  _have_  more than one pitch.”

“I will eventually, though,” Yamamoto dimples at him. “And I’ve been working on my curveball.”

Gokudera wrinkles his nose. “You can’t even throw that straight right now, much less with any sort of aim.”

“But we should make up the signals right now,” Yamamoto urges. “To motivate me to learn it faster.”

“If you get any  _more_  motivated you’re gonna outpace me, Mo-chan,” Gokudera protests, but he submits to the other’s plea anyway. “Here.” He curls two fingers in against his palm, forming his hand into a shape Yamamoto should be able to see even from the distance of the pitcher’s mound. “This’ll be for the curve, ‘kay?”

It’s easy to forget about the demands of homework when it’s so easy to draw laughing pleasure from Yamamoto just by offering a few simple hand gestures for him to memorize. Gokudera is certain the other will have them all learned to the point of reflex by the time they get to practice tomorrow, and it’s kind of fun, like they’re making up a secret language no one but them will understand.

He lets the homework go. It’s not like they need to worry about it, if they’re going to be the best battery in Japan.


	6. Winning

There’s dust hanging in the air, dirt from dozens of feet skidding across the baseball diamond kicked up so fine it refuses to settle to the ground again. The sun is hotter than it has been yet this year, beating down until Yamamoto can all but feel the back of his neck going raw in the heat, until every point of contact with his uniform is sticky from the sweat beading on his skin. His ears are ringing, his shoulders ache, his legs are heavy from exertion and his pulse hasn’t slowed since the game started.

He doesn’t think he’s ever been this happy.

They’re leading by a safe two runs at the top of the ninth inning, with just one runner on first and a batter Yamamoto knows he doesn’t have to be particularly afraid of, but he’s not thinking about victory. It’s too far off, even within the few seconds it will take to throw the last ball of the inning, to strike this particular batter out and guarantee their team a spot in the semifinals of the middle school tournament; victory is a strange, elusive concept, too psychological to hold Yamamoto’s attention right now. He feels a little like he’s floating, existing solely in this moment, the pleasure of competition and exertion far more satisfying than any win could be.

There’s motion, sharp and quick enough to draw Yamamoto’s eyes. Gokudera’s waving at him, jerking his fingers in a way that says he’s been trying to get the other’s attention for a few seconds. Yamamoto flashes a smile of apology, doesn’t need to be close enough to see to know that Gokudera is rolling his eyes. What he can see, what he  _needs_ to see, is the flicker of the other’s fingers, marking out the signal for the curveball Yamamoto still can’t always throw where Gokudera wants it. It’s a surprise -- this batter hasn’t connected with any of the usual fastballs at this point, it would be easy to strike him out with one of those -- but Yamamoto just nods, his smile lingering irrepressible at his lips as he takes a deep breath and draws back into his wind-up.

They are lucky. This time the ball goes where he wants it, sweeping in towards the batter to draw a desperate swing from him before veering away and smacking so hard against Gokudera’s mitt Yamamoto can hear it even from the distance of the pitcher’s mound. It’s over, then, Yamamoto knows without hearing the umpire’s shout of “Strike three!” or turning to see the scoreboard flash into proof of their victory. Even then, it’s not the victory that keeps his smile at his lips or that brings him jogging forward to meet Gokudera as the other gets to his feet and pulls his helmet free.

“Why’d you ask for the curve?” he asks as they turn towards the dugout while the rest of their team is still coming in from the rest of the field. “We coulda just gotten him out with a fastball, right?”

Gokudera huffs, tosses his head. His hands are shaking a little, enough that his helmet is shifting in his grip. Yamamoto reaches out to curl his fingers around the wire guard and tug it free to take the weight himself.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Gokudera insists. “We were ahead already, right?”

Yamamoto blinks at the top of the other’s head, the way the lines of sweat are shading it into alternate shadows and silver in the light. “Ha, you were showing off.”

“Shut up,” Gokudera snaps, reaches out to snatch his helmet back. “What are you doing, idiot, you’re supposed to be taking care of yourself and not hovering over me.” His words lack any real aggression under them, and when he looks up his eyes are bright, his mouth pulling on the shape of a smile in spite of the sheen of exhausted sweat across his forehead and dipping along the line of his throat into his uniform.

“We won,” Yamamoto says unnecessarily. He can’t stop smiling, now, the fantasy of their victory forming into reality as the rest of their team comes shouting in to clap hands to shoulders, swing around Yamamoto to laugh exhausted delight at him. And Gokudera’s smiling too, competitive satisfaction winning out over his usual frown.

“Yeah,” he grins, leans in to bump an elbow against Yamamoto’s waist. “Yeah, we won.”

There’s more to do after that, shedding their gear so they can go back out, line up in the beating sun and the fine-grained dust to bow to the other team, collecting mitts and bats and water bottles before they all pile back onto the bus to arrive back in Namimori just shy of dinnertime. Yamamoto gets a little hazy on the details, loses his attention after they’re back on the bus and Gokudera has fallen asleep with his head resting on Yamamoto’s shoulder and the strands of his hair tickling the other’s neck. He’s still wandering through the afternoon, reliving the recent memories as the motion of the bus lulls him into an almost-doze to match Gokudera’s, replaying the shape of Gokudera’s smile and the exhausted delight in his eyes.

Yamamoto decides he likes winning, if it makes Gokudera smile like that.


	7. Breathe

Gokudera is in relatively good shape. Baseball, playing and training both, has only served to hone the athleticism he carried from a childhood spent chasing Yamamoto over half the city, until now he thinks he could probably at least pace anyone else in the club on a training run. But that’s under ideal circumstances, when he’s focusing on maintaining a steady rhythm and sticking to a set rate for his breathing, and these are not ideal circumstances. He takes off too fast, bolting out the front door almost before he’s gotten off the phone, and by the time he’s run most of the way to the hospital he has to slow down, walk the last few blocks so he can catch his breath and clear his lightheaded dizziness before he makes it in the front doors.

It only half-helps. He’s still breathing hard when he comes up to the front desk, his thoughts still hazy enough that he blurts, “Where’s Mo-chan?” to the woman on the other side before he realizes what he’s saying. He closes his mouth on any other inopportune questions, ducks his head under the flush of self-consciousness, and only when he’s sure he’s got his desperate adrenaline under control does he ask for “Yamamoto Takeshi” past gritted teeth.

The woman is kind enough to avoid commenting on what Gokudera suspects is all too obvious panic. There’s a pause, the sound of papers ruffling, and then she’s directing him up two floors, giving directions he only barely listens to before making for the stairs. He can’t run these either, has to take them at a jog more than a sprint, and even then he’s breathing audibly hard again by the top, feeling exhausted and overheated and anxious as he makes his way down the eerie quiet of the hallway in pursuit of the room he wants.

In the end he doesn’t need the room number at all. He’s peering at the labels as he goes by, looking for some pattern he can’t see yet to the assigned numbers, when a door a few steps down the hall opens and the sound of Yamamoto Tsuyoshi’s voice echoes down the hallway. Gokudera’s head comes up instantly, his heart skipping frantic with nerves like he’s never seen father or son before, and then Tsuyoshi is looking up and sees him before Gokudera can decide if he wants to stay or go.

“Gokudera!” he calls, waving as easily as if it’s his own sushi shop and not an unfamiliar hospital room he’s standing in front of. “I’m so glad you could come!”

Gokudera moves down the hall, drawn by the gesture of the other’s hand and too much reflex to resist. The hall feels all too short, now, he’s in the doorway before he can even decide what to say, and then there’s a friendly hand at his shoulders, Tsuyoshi smiling down at him with an expression uncannily like his son’s.

“He’ll be glad to see you,” he says, his touch urging Gokudera into the room without waiting for any further sign of agreement. “I’m just going to head home to get something to bring back for him to eat. Do you want some dinner too?”

“Uh,” Gokudera says, and Tsuyoshi beams at him as if he’s delivered an entire speech extolling the virtues of sushi.

“I’ll bring enough for you both,” he says, and then he’s gone, waving towards the inside of the room and moving down the hall before Gokudera has yet got his bearings.

Then there’s a voice, “Hayato?” familiar and warm in spite of a weird softness to the syllables, and Gokudera is stepping inside entirely, moving forward without any thought at all.

Yamamoto looks better than he expected. The word ‘hospital’ over the phone had been terrifying, even when Tsuyoshi assured him everything was fine, but in person he looks almost completely normal but for the white cast making his right arm bulky and unwieldy. Then Gokudera comes in closer, enough that he can reach out to take the hand reaching out for him, and he can see the weird unfocus in Yamamoto’s eyes, the alarming pale under the usual tan of his cheeks.

“Mo-chan,” he says, tightens his fingers on Yamamoto’s because the other isn’t squeezing as hard as he should be. “What did you  _do_?”

Yamamoto’s smile is fragile, a little shaky but familiar under the strain laid over it, like he’s trying to muster up his usual warmth for Gokudera’s sake. It makes Gokudera’s throat go tight, burns in his chest and against his eyes when he blinks.

“I fell out of a tree,” Yamamoto says, his voice softer than usual but normal otherwise. “I -- Dad says the branch I was climbing to broke.” Another smile, more apologetic this time. “I just remember climbing onto the lower branch. They said it’s the concussion, that made me forget.”

“God,” Gokudera says, and he’s got to be squeezing too tight now, there’s no way he’s not hurting Yamamoto, but he can’t let his hold go. “You  _idiot_ , you made us all worry something really bad had happened.”

“Ah.” Yamamoto takes a breath, flexes his fingers a little against Gokudera’s hold. “Sorry.”

Gokudera looks back up at his face, forces his hand to relax with a massive force of will. Yamamoto’s touch lingers for a moment, his hold slow to respond in kind; then his hand drops back to the blankets, he blinks weirdly slowly, and Gokudera can feel his face fall into a frown.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asks, flinching at the way his voice tries to jump high in the middle of the question.

Yamamoto blinks again, smiles weakly. “I’m kind of dizzy. And my arm hurts.”

It’s a simple statement. Coming from someone else Gokudera wouldn’t think anything of it. But Yamamoto is white-pale under the color of his tan, his eyes not-quite-focused and his smile strained at the corners, and that means he must be  _really_  hurting, if it’s written clearly enough on his face for Gokudera to see.

“ _Shit_ ,” he snaps, his frown tightening into a scowl. “What the hell kind of a place is this, that they’re not giving you something for the pain?”

“Ha, they did already,” Yamamoto says, laughing faint in the back of his throat. “It just takes a little bit to start working.”

“They should have given you something that works  _faster_ ,” Gokudera growls. There’s a chair pushed against the wall alongside Yamamoto’s bed; he drags it over, venting the worst of his impotent frustration in the movement so he can drop to sit next to the bed, turned so he can keep an eye on the other’s expression.

“Hayato,” Yamamoto is saying as Gokudera sits down, and he’s looking out the window, his gaze fixed on the sky outside and not on Gokudera’s face. “I--”

“Look at me, if you’ve got something to say,” Gokudera snaps. “You’re talking so quietly I can barely hear you when you’re not facing me.”

Yamamoto smiles, turns his head back. “Sorry,” he offers; then he blinks, and his smile falls away, leaves him looking so uncharacteristically serious Gokudera’s skin prickles with alarm. “I really am sorry.”

“What?” Gokudera can feel his forehead crease into confusion, concern turning into frustration and making his voice unnecessarily sharp. “Christ, what the fuck are you apologizing for?”

He’s expecting a laugh, some half-formed explanation that he can roll his eyes at and tease Yamamoto about. He’s not expecting the way Yamamoto cringes, like he’s flinching away from some unpleasant admission, and he’s  _definitely_  not expecting the other to say “I’m not going to be able to keep our promise.”

Gokudera stares at him for a moment, his thoughts entirely blank of any comprehension at all. “Are you delirious or something? What are you talking about?”

“Baseball,” Yamamoto says, and understanding clicks over into Gokudera’s head all at once.

“Don’t be stupid,” he growls. “You can just come back and play again once you’re better.”

“I won’t be able to be professional.” Yamamoto is still looking at the other, like Gokudera told him to, and Gokudera can’t get himself to look away from the resigned loss in the gold of the other’s eyes. “Not if I’m out for months in the very beginning of the tournament season.”

Gokudera wants to offer some kind of comfort. He wants to tell Yamamoto that everything is fine, that he’s being stupid, that he’s overreacting and that he’s good enough to succeed anyway. But he’s never been the optimist, of the two of them, the only one who has ever been able to muster unreasonable hope is Yamamoto, and there’s no panacea he can hold out to brush aside the shadow in Yamamoto’s eyes.

“Fine,” he says instead, straightens his shoulders and tosses his hair back like he’s bracing himself for a fight. “Fine, then we’ll just have to have a different goal.”

“You still could,” Yamamoto starts to say, his voice bright like sunshine through broken glass, and Gokudera is on his feet before he can think, reaching out to close his fist on Yamamoto’s shirt before he remembers the other is hurt and stalls the motion short of pulling him forward. He leans in instead, throwing a hand out to brace himself against the bed and tipping in so close Yamamoto’s eyes go wide as he blinks up at Gokudera’s sudden proximity.

“Don’t be a  _fucking_  idiot, Mo-chan,” Gokudera snaps, twisting his fingers into a tighter fist in lieu of physically shaking the other boy. “Whatever I do you’re doing too, got it? If that means something other than baseball then that’s what we’ll do.” Yamamoto blinks, his eyelashes dark and feathery from this close-up, and Gokudera finishes, “It’s not like I’m good enough to play without you, anyway.”

Yamamoto’s eyelashes flicker again, his gaze sliding off-focus and away from Gokudera’s eyes, drifting down to skim over the other’s features; then he nods, slow like he’s still working through what the other has said, and Gokudera lets his hold slide free, pushes back and away to drop into the chair. His heart is racing with adrenaline, his hands trembling faintly and his throat still tight on the aggression in his tone, but then there’s a laugh, bright and warm and familiar, and when he looks up Yamamoto is smiling at him, the curve of his lips settling into the corners of his eyes until he looks like himself again.

“Guess I’m gonna have to start doing my homework, huh?”

It’s not all that funny, as far as jokes go. But Gokudera is humming with adrenaline and aching with relief at having Yamamoto smiling like usual again, and when he starts laughing it sets Yamamoto off too, until they’re still giggling in something approaching hysteria when Tsuyoshi returns with the promised sushi.

The setting is all wrong, still, the bed too white and the room awkwardly laid out for three people to eat in the same space. But with a little color back in Yamamoto’s cheeks and his permanent smile reinstated, Gokudera can breathe normally again.


	8. Contentment

It’s a lot better once the pain meds take effect. Yamamoto doesn’t even notice the dull throb of agony up his arm and along his shoulder fade away; it just stops being a concern, somehow, takes far less of his attention than the glow of the sunlight through the window or the soft of the blanket under his free hand. His dad is smiling, Gokudera is laughing, and even the thoughts of the baseball games he’ll be missing, the months of healing and the physical therapy in front of him, don’t carry any more weight than a cloud skudding across a cloudless sky.

Yamamoto had thought, somewhere in the haze of pain clouding his recent memories, that Gokudera would leave after an hour, maybe two, stay to eat and then go home. But he hasn’t moved by the time they’re done, shows no signs at all of getting up even when Yamamoto’s dad is packing up the few empty dishes they have left. He’s talking about cooking, now, recounting some horror story of the pasta Bianchi tried to make on her last day off, and Yamamoto is listening without really following the thread of the story. He feels a little bit detached, warm and fuzzy like he’s drifting to sleep without even lying down, until he’s surprised to look around and realize his dad has left the room, that the dishes are gone and there’s just Gokudera in the light streaming in through the window.

Gokudera’s hands are moving, the expansive gestures he makes when he’s too caught up in what he’s saying to be self-conscious about his movements. In the illumination his fingers look elegant, slender and graceful even in their incidental motion, unstudied beauty as much as the tilt of his head to shake his hair back from his face. That motion pulls Yamamoto’s attention too, drags his gaze to slide like water along the silver sheen of the other’s hair, and he’s reaching out before he has thought, while Gokudera is still in the middle of a sentence and gesturing so wide his wrist hits Yamamoto’s arm as he moves.

“Hey,” Gokudera snaps, “Are you even  _listening_  to me?”

His words are at a distance; Yamamoto hears them, forms a response, but what comes out of his mouth first is, “Your hair is really pretty.”

There’s a pause, the weight of Gokudera’s hands landing against the bed. “You sound weird. You’re all dopey from that medicine, aren’t you?”

“I was listening,” Yamamoto says, backtracking for the last unanswered question. His fingers trail through Gokudera’s hair, catch the silver warm and glowing across his skin. “I like the way your voice sounds too.”

“Oh god,” Gokudera sighs. It sounds warm, heavy with resignation and tight on amusement; when Yamamoto blinks into focus on his face his lips are curved, the corner of his mouth curling up into a fought-back smile. “You’re fucking  _gone_ , Mo-chan.”

Yamamoto’s smile feels endless, warm and wide and delighted. “I’m right here.”

“Whatever,” Gokudera says, waving a hand like he’s brushing away the reply. “It’s fine, you’re checked out. If you wanna play with my hair, go ahead.”

“I always want to touch your hair.”

“Yeah, okay,” Gokudera says, sounding skeptical, but he shuts his eyes anyway, ducks his head so Yamamoto can get a better angle on his scalp. Yamamoto can’t see his expression as well but it’s okay; he can see Gokudera’s shoulders relaxing, the slump of his back as he leans in farther over the bed in response to the push of Yamamoto’s fingers against his hair. Yamamoto flexes his fingers to dig in harder, ruffles up the smooth fall of Gokudera’s hair, and Gokudera groans far back in his throat, tips in farther until his forehead is pressed to the bed an inch from Yamamoto’s knee.

“Okay.” Yamamoto can only barely hear the words, muffled as they are against the sheets against Gokudera’s mouth. “If this is what you want to do when you’re all fucked up on pain meds, please, be my guest.”

Yamamoto’s laugh isn’t conscious; it bubbles up his throat all unintended, splashing over his tongue until the sound nearly startles him. “Does it feel good?”

“Fuck yes it feels good,” Gokudera says, shifting his arm so he’s sprawled out along the entire edge of the bed. “You can do this all night if you feel like it.”

Yamamoto smiles, blinks hazy sunlight off his eyelashes so he can focus on the tracery of the light across Gokudera’s hair. “Okay.”

They are both quiet for a while. Yamamoto isn’t paying attention to time; it’s pleasant enough to have the pain gone, to have the warmth of sunlight against his face and the soft of Gokudera’s hair under his fingertips. The sun settles under the horizon, the light dimming from yellow to gold to orange, filtering the room into the red of oncoming night before Gokudera speaks, softly against the edge of the bed and without lifting his head.

“I’m sorry.” It’s faint, muffled by the blankets and quiet to begin with, but the room is so still Yamamoto can hear the words as clearly as if Gokudera is whispering in his ear. “About your arm. And baseball.”

Yamamoto smiles, drifting in the present moment of complete contentment until it’s only the true sincerity in Gokudera’s voice that keeps him tethered to the conversation.

“‘Sokay,” he says, the words slurring together on his tongue. There’s more than just the response, some vague feeling of optimism borne on the other boy’s presence, the reality of the moment and the promise of a future so far off it’s unfathomable, but it’s too hard to find the words in the end, and Gokudera’s shoulders are relaxing against the bed, so Yamamoto stays quiet, listens instead to the sound of the other boy’s breathing going slow and heavy with sleep.

His dad comes back in a little while later, after the room is dark with night and Yamamoto is just thinking about reaching to try to grab at the pullcord for the blinds. He glances at Gokudera, at Yamamoto’s fingers long since stilled to only incidental motion through the other boy’s hair, and when he comes in it’s softly in consideration of Gokudera’s sleep. He pulls the blinds without speaking, comes in to lean over the edge of Yamamoto’s bed and reach out to ruffle his hair.

“Doing okay?” he asks, pitching his voice so low Gokudera doesn’t even stir at the sound.

Yamamoto looks up, smiles drowsily. In the dark the temptation of sleep is irresistible, dragging him under so he yawns even as he’s trying to nod silent agreement.

His dad laughs softly, presses gentle comfort against Yamamoto’s shoulder, and retreats to tug the convertible chair in the corner into the futon intended for overnight visitors. Yamamoto watches his movements, blinking more and more slowly with every passing second, until finally he shuts his eyes and sleep tugs him gently into unconsciousness.


	9. Enthusiasm

It’s weird to have afternoons free. After months of practice every day after school Gokudera had become used to it, the physical exertion of baseball practice to follow a long day of sitting still in class, until going straight back to Yamamoto’s house after class is over leaves him jittery and on-edge from too much energy and not enough effort.

He takes it out on Yamamoto in the form of extended studying sessions. The other boy can’t write much at all; his handwriting, always bordering on illegible, is entirely unreadable now, whether he attempts to write with his constrained right hand or fumbles through it with his left. So it’s all aloud, Gokudera reciting back the lectures from class Yamamoto never seems to manage to listen to while the other watches him with every appearance of attention. It’s a bit uncanny, truthfully, to have him looking so focused for such a long period of time; Gokudera can only really take it for about an hour before he cuts himself off mid-sentence with “You’re not even listening to me, are you?”

“Huh?” Yamamoto blinks, his usual unconscious smile slipping into blank confusion. “I was listening, why did you stop?”

“No way,” Gokudera huffs. “You can’t pay attention to anything except baseball for more than five minutes. Do you even know what subject we’re studying?”

“Yeah,” Yamamoto says, still looking faintly confused. “History. I was listening, Hayato, I promise I was.”

Gokudera crosses his arms, tips his chin down to give Yamamoto a skeptical once-over. “Sure you were. Tell me what I was just saying.”

“Okay,” Yamamoto says, and then he starts to talk.

And talk. And talk. It’s nearly fifteen minutes before Gokudera can collect himself enough to cut off the flow of words, Yamamoto reciting back all the information Gokudera has been saying for the last hour, if somewhat jumbled in order and casual in delivery.

“ _Fine_ ,” and he waves his hand, fluttering his fingers at Yamamoto until the other’s voice trails to a stop. “What the hell, Mo-chan, have you just been holding out on me all this time?” He feels faintly betrayed, mostly impressed, like some failing he always took for granted in his best friend turned out to be not a weakness at all. “You know all this stuff already.”

Yamamoto shakes his head quick, laughs as he brings his free hand up to ruffle at the back of his hair. “No, no, I’m only learning it just now! I didn’t know any of this when we sat down.”

Gokudera’s the one confused, now. He can feel his forehead creasing, a line settling in between his eyebrows as he stares at the simple delight across the other boy’s features. If he’s lying, he’s a much better actor than years of friendship have yet indicated he could possibly be. “If you can learn this that quickly, why do you always fail all your tests?” Gokudera leans sideways, reaches for Yamamoto’s bag to fish out one of the other’s notebooks and riffle through the pages. The first paper he finds bears him out, the “19” written at the top in bright red letter like the condemnation to stupidity he has always thought it was. He pulls it free, smacks it flat on the table like some kind of decisive proof. “You’re always  _terrible_  at school.”

“Oh.” Yamamoto ducks his head, still grinning with no trace of shame at this evidence of his past academic failings. “I’ve been focused on baseball. And it’s always so boring in class.”

Gokudera scoffs. “Better to learn it in class than have to study for it later at home.”

Yamamoto looks back up to catch Gokudera’s gaze. When he smiles the expression spreads across his whole face, crinkles his eyes up and draws Gokudera’s attention to the soft of his mouth, the easy curve of his lips into the happiness that has always seemed so effortless for him.

“It’s more fun to study with you,” he says. “You’re nice to listen to and you make things way more interesting than sensei does.”

Gokudera doesn’t know why he starts to flush. It’s true that it’s a compliment, but Yamamoto is always saying ridiculous things; he thought he had become used to them, had learned how to brush them off without hesitation. But he’s going red, heat spreading out across his cheeks and sweeping out across his whole face, and when he ducks to let his hair fall in front of his features it just gets worse, until he’s sure he’s glowing the same color as the ink on Yamamoto’s test sheet.

“Idiot,” he says to the table, and Yamamoto laughs, the familiar purr of his amusement making Gokudera smile even past the heat of embarrassment all across his cheeks. “Fine. Let’s take a break, we were about due for one anyway.”

“Okay.” Yamamoto leans in closer; when Gokudera glances up he’s smiling like he has a secret, his eyes glowing with excitement. “I have an idea. You know the signals we made up for baseball?”

“Yeah,” Gokudera says, his agreement tentative with uncertainty about where Yamamoto is going with this.

Yamamoto’s smile dimples at the corners of his mouth, delight written so clear on his features it’s overriding Gokudera’s self-consciousness, pulling the other boy into the thrumming adrenaline of excitement before he has even heard the probably-absurd idea. “Since we can’t use them until my arm heals, we should do something else with them.”

It  _is_  an absurd idea, as it turns out. But Gokudera can’t get his mouth to stop smiling as Yamamoto lays out the details with as much enthusiasm as he brings to everything Gokudera is involved in, and in the end he is caught in the planning process before he even realized he had agreed.

It’s easy to be enthusiastic when Yamamoto is showing him how.


	10. Implied

Yamamoto isn’t paying any attention to class at all.

He knows he should be -- it’ll be easier to study later if he pays more attention to what he’s supposed to be learning when he’s supposed to be learning it -- but his arm is aching with a faint dull throb just enough to be distracting from serious pursuits, and lunch in is fifteen minutes, and he’s been trying to get Gokudera’s attention from across the classroom for five, and that’s absorbing all his focus at the moment. He gave up on patience minutes ago, devoted himself instead to staring at the back of the other’s head in an attempt to psychically persuade him to turn around, and from the hunch of Gokudera’s shoulders it’s working, at least enough that Yamamoto can see the effort it is costing him to not turn around from here.

The movement of Gokudera’s fingers catches Yamamoto’s focus, draws his gaze away from the light catching bright off the ends of the other’s hair to zero in on the shift of his hand instead. The other isn’t looking at Yamamoto, still, doesn’t see the position of the other boy’s hand, but his own still falls into the angle of his fingers that means  _pay attention_ , the snap of almost-irritation as clear from across the room as it would be on the baseball field.

Yamamoto grins, lets his own hand -- crossed fingers for  _I’m hungry_  -- go slack as he turns back to the front of the room obediently. But the teacher is just wrapping up anyway, expectation of lunch is making the other students shuffle in their seats, and in the end it’s barely three minutes between Gokudera’s silent signal and Yamamoto maneuvering across the class to lean over his desk instead of staring from the other side of the room.

“Idiot,” Gokudera offers without looking up from where he’s condensing his pencils into a case and closing the notebook he hasn’t written in for the last hour. “I’m not going to help you study if you don’t even try to pay attention in class.”

“How did you know I wasn’t?” Yamamoto asks, still grinning with the simple joy of lunchtime and the sound of Gokudera’s voice.

Gokudera looks up through his hair, one eyebrow arced high in disbelief. “Mo-chan. I  _know_  you. You think I don’t know when you’re not paying attention in class?”

That makes Yamamoto laugh, any attempt at rebuttal dying to the truth of Gokudera’s statement. The other boy pushes his notebook aside, moves to stand up from his desk, and Yamamoto holds out one of the two lunches he collected off the counter of the sushi shop this morning. Gokudera accepts his without protest, fiddling with the knot at the top so he can slide the lid half-off as they make their way out of the classroom and up to the stairs leading to the sun-warmth of the rooftop.

“This isn’t another one of your experiments, is it?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at the neat lines of food inside the box.

Yamamoto shakes his head, slows his pace a little as they hit the stairs; it’s harder to keep his balance with one arm wrapped into immobility, safer if slower to adopt an easy pace up the stairs. Gokudera isn’t even looking at him -- he still appears wholly engrossed in the box in his hands -- but he slows as if on a cue Yamamoto didn’t give as they hit the first step of the staircase.

“Not this time. I’m saving the cooking until I have two good hands again.”

“Oh thank god,” Gokudera deadpans, fishing out a bite from the box and eating it as they get to the first landing, round the corner for the second flight of steps. “Sis is enough poisoning for my whole life, thanks very much.”

“Aww, I’m not  _that_  bad,” Yamamoto protests, the complaint weak around the amusement on his tongue.

Gokudera shoots him a look, skeptical and sharp but undermined by the smile clinging to the corner of his mouth. “Yes, you are  _exactly_  that bad,” he insists, taking the last steps fast so he can push the door open, kick it wide and hold it there while Yamamoto steps out of the stairwell and into the bright glow of the sun.

They make for their usual spot without discussion, stepping around the corner from the door to the roof and into the section of wall secluded and full in the warmth of the sun. It’s only once they’re both settled -- Yamamoto with his back to the sunlight, Gokudera sitting against the wall to face him -- that Yamamoto starts tugging at the tie around his own lunch, the movement a little clumsy one-handed.

“Here.” Gokudera tips in, his fingers making quick work of the knot in the cloth. Yamamoto glances up to flash him a smile but Gokudera is already leaning back, turning his attention back to his own lunch like there is nothing remarkable at all about him offering assistance. “Don’t you get that off soon?”

“Mm,” Yamamoto hums affirmation, tugging off his lid to reveal a lunch significantly more colorful and varied than that for Gokudera’s far-pickier tastes. “This Saturday. Then I’ll have to do some special exercises to get the strength back, but then--”

“Baseball,” Gokudera finishes for him. When Yamamoto looks up the other is grinning, the expression catching his eyes bright and tugging his mouth lopsided with pleasure. “Good.” He looks back down, takes another huge bite of his food. “It’s a pain trying to keep you entertained every afternoon.”

“You’ll come back to the club with me, right?” Yamamoto asks. “Even if we’re not going to become professionals?”

Gokudera rolls his eyes, kicks his leg out to bump against Yamamoto’s hip. “Of course I’m coming back,” he declares, as if there was never any question on the matter at all. “It’s not like  _I_  need the study time. And you’re not going to have anyone to pitch to if I’m not there, baseball idiot.”

Yamamoto’s smile is light, freed of concern and glowing with optimism for the future. “I’m glad,” he says, still looking at Gokudera as the other turns to his lunch for another mouthful. The sunlight is turning Gokudera’s hair white-silver, outlining the shape of his eyelashes in feather-faint shadows against his cheekbones, and for a minute Yamamoto is caught, his thoughts trailing into silence as warmth sweeps through him and drowns out any coherency he might have had.

He doesn’t realize he’s staring, might not realize it at all except that Gokudera glances up and catches him at it. The other boy’s cheeks go pink, his foot moves to knock Yamamoto’s hip again, and when he snaps “What the fuck are you staring at?” Yamamoto knows better than to try to explain himself. When he turns his attention to his own lunch Gokudera starts talking a little too loudly, outlining the training regimen they will need to undertake once Yamamoto is cleared for practice again. By the time they are done eating Gokudera’s flush is gone, Yamamoto’s attention is firmly caught by baseball, and everything is nearly ordinary again.

If Yamamoto thinks about it again as he’s falling asleep that night, closes his eyes to the shimmer of sunlight on silver and the strain of self-consciousness in a familiar voice, the implications aren’t enough to keep him awake.


	11. Granted

By the time they’re heading back in from the practice field, Gokudera is all but seething.

“It’s not  _fair_.” He sounds petulant, he knows, the words whining like he’s a child denied a treat, but the awareness doesn’t help soothe his irritation. It just aches frustration under his skin, pushes him to drag his helmet off with more aggression than care so the edge of the metal catches at his hair, twists his ponytail half-loose while he and Yamamoto are still making their way back to the now-abandoned dugout. “How can they not give you your spot back?”

“Aww, it’s okay,” Yamamoto soothes. He sounds calm, sincere in his unconcern, and that just serves to make Gokudera angrier, protective irritation hot in his veins since Yamamoto isn’t going to do anything about this injustice himself. “I haven’t played in months, they can’t just put me back in the starting lineup just like that.”

“They  _should_ ,” Gokudera snaps. He tosses the helmet into the corner with more violence than it deserves, gaining some mild satisfaction from the sound of the impact. “You practice longer than anyone else and you’re  _better_.” He flings himself onto the bench with the same careless aggression he showed for the helmet, nearly slamming his knee against the corner of the wood as he drops to yank at the pads strapped over his legs.

“You practice as much as I do,” Yamamoto says, sitting with significantly more care alongside Gokudera. He’s close enough that Gokudera’s elbow bumps the other’s arm as he strips off the layers of protective gear but Gokudera doesn’t look up; he knows Yamamoto’s just going to be watching him with that appreciative warmth in his eyes, gratitude for the frustration on his behalf even if he’s not sharing in it. “I just wish you could be the main catcher while I’m getting back up to speed.”

“Do you ever bother to use your ears, Mo-chan?” Gokudera asks, tossing the last of his gear into the pile by the wall. “I keep telling you, idiot, I’m  _your_ partner. I asked to stay with you instead of being in the first string.” He does look up then, shooting Yamamoto a glare through the tangled strands of his hair. “Unless you don’t  _want_  me to stay late with you.”

Yamamoto blinks, surprise printed as clearly across his face as if this is the first time he’s heard this and not going on the dozenth; then he smiles, like he always does, like Gokudera has handed him a direct pass to the nationals, and Gokudera has to look away before his cheeks start to burn with a telltale blush.

“This really is ridiculous, though,” he points out, leaning over so he can tug at the dusty laces of his shoes. There’s a touch at the back of his neck, Yamamoto’s fingers reaching out to pull his hairtie free, and Gokudera ducks his head to the contact for a moment, his focus stuttering under the flickering warmth of the sensation against his skin. “Mm. Don’t you need to worry about overtraining or something?” He starts to looks back up towards Yamamoto, turning his head before he straightens, but Yamamoto’s close,  _much_  closer than Gokudera expects and leaning in even as the other turns. Gokudera blinks, shocked into stillness by the close-up shadow of Yamamoto’s eyelashes against his cheek and the warmth of an exhale against his mouth, and in that moment of breathless hesitation Yamamoto’s mouth catches at his skin, presses warm against mostly his cheek and the very corner of Gokudera’s lips.

All Gokudera’s breath leaves his body in a single startled exhale. His eyes are open, he’s staring at the familiar features made strange by such close proximity, and for a moment every reaction in his head hesitates. There are still fingers at the back of his neck, Yamamoto’s hand caught in his half-undone hair, and Yamamoto’s not pulling away, his lips are lingering while Gokudera’s skin starts to burn hot under the contact. Gokudera can’t think, he can’t move, and then Yamamoto is drawing back, leaning away so the other boy can see the whole of his face at once instead of just the close-up details.

Neither of them speaks for a minute. Gokudera is still angled in over his knees, any thought of sitting up forgotten along with his knowledge of how to breathe and think, and Yamamoto is blinking slowly, like he can’t quite remember how. His lips are barely parted; Gokudera can see him sigh, slow and shaky, before he licks against his mouth like he’s tasting the damp against his skin.

“What…?” Gokudera finally manages, when it becomes clear Yamamoto isn’t going to be coming back to coherency on his own anytime soon. The other boy’s hand is still at the back of his neck; Gokudera’s skin is starting to burn, now, his shoulders drawing tight with awareness of the contact that has never seemed so warm before.

Yamamoto blinks again, like he’s fighting for focus, his gaze sliding over Gokudera’s face to catch at his lips before he looks back up at the other’s eyes. “Sorry,” he says, though he doesn’t sound apologetic in the least. He sounds warm, dreamy, like chocolate melting in the sun. “I wanted to kiss your neck and you turned.”

“What?” Gokudera asks again, helpless in the face of this confusion. He can’t get his bearings, he can’t even force traction on what’s happening; he feels drunk, dizzy, suddenly lost in a world that he thought he knew.

“Your neck,” Yamamoto says again, as if that’s the piece Gokudera is hung up on. His eyes drift sideways again, his thumb shifts against the other’s skin. “Here” and he’s leaning in again, so smoothly Gokudera can’t muster any aggression to push him away. He’s frozen in place, his whole body going taut with adrenaline he doesn’t know what to do with, and then Yamamoto’s lips are pressing against his neck, the heat of the other boy’s breathing brushing against the loose strands of his hair.

“Just that,” Yamamoto is saying, pulling back and away. He’s licking his lips again, the motion as distracting as it must be unconscious; Gokudera can’t look away, can feel his cheeks burning as hot as the skin under Yamamoto’s fingers and even then can’t drag his gaze aside.

“You.” Gokudera can’t find words. “You can’t just…” His thoughts stall on the word  _kiss_ , his gaze sticking to Yamamoto’s mouth, and now  _he’s_  licking his lips, anxiety and confusion trembling through his whole body. “Mo-chan.”

Yamamoto’s head tilts, his eyes going dreamy again. “Hayato.” There’s probably some law against the way he says Gokudera’s name, the way the syllables slide liquid across his tongue. Or maybe he’s always sounded that way? Gokudera can’t remember, now. “Can I kiss you?”

Gokudera whimpers. It’s not deliberate; the sound just attaches itself to his breathing, strains hard in his throat as he tries to exhale. He can’t speak, there’s no way he can achieve coherency for the panic and confusion and heat in his blood. But he’s still staring at Yamamoto’s mouth, the impulse too great to overcome, and when Yamamoto starts to lean in again Gokudera sits up, moving to meet him without thinking at all.

His heart is pounding in his throat, nerves trembling through his fingers and rushing his breathing into overdrive. But Yamamoto’s hand is still steady against his skin, Yamamoto’s exhale is warm against his lips, and then they’re kissing, their lips fitting together as Gokudera’s pulse speeds frantic. Yamamoto’s lips are damp, warm from that unthought motion of his tongue; when Gokudera tips his head their mouths slide against each other, the friction bursting out into his blood like fireworks. His sense of balance reels, dizziness overtaking his body as well as his thoughts, and when he reaches out it’s Yamamoto’s shirt his fingers meet, his hand forming into a fist to hold himself upright. Yamamoto makes a noise, some low murmur that Gokudera can feel against the inside of his mouth, and he can feel the shudder of reaction run down his spine like Yamamoto’s lips are electric.

It’s only a moment that they stay together, with Yamamoto’s mouth hot against Gokudera’s; then they break apart as if on some cue, Gokudera panting for air like he’s been sprinting and Yamamoto’s eyes still closed as if he can’t recall how to open them. His entire expression is soft, relaxed and unfocused, and Gokudera can feel his stomach drop as if he’s falling, like gravity has vanished along with everything else he took for granted.

“Fuck,” he says, his voice shaking in his throat along with his breathing. “Mo-chan, I--”

Yamamoto opens his eyes. He looks shell-shocked, knocked right out of himself and into something warm and pliant and irresistible, and whatever Gokudera was going to say crumbles into the shape of a whimper in his throat.

He’s the one who leans in, this time, catches Yamamoto’s mouth with his while the other boy is still blinking in incoherent warmth. That gets him another vibration of noise, some unheard response at his lips, and they’re pressed in together, then, Gokudera’s arm pinned between them and Yamamoto’s other hand coming out to land gently against his hip. The world falls away, their surroundings and Gokudera’s attention both, until all his focus is trapped by the soft friction of Yamamoto’s lips on his.

Gokudera doesn’t have the words to ask for an explanation, but with the warmth of Yamamoto’s mouth against his, he’s not sure he needs one anyway.


	12. Attention

Yamamoto has been watching the storm clouds blow in all afternoon. The advantage of having a window seat in the classroom is that he can look out at the sky, if Gokudera is snapping silent gestures at him to stop staring. The view means he’s seen the blue giving way to grey, has been tracking the shift in the weather ever since the lunchtime sun flickered into shadow. By the time class is over, there are a few raindrops collecting against the glass of the pane, the heavy weight of the clouds overhead promising a downpour of a few hours, at least, more than enough to cancel practice for the day.

Yamamoto doesn’t mind. It’s not what he was expecting to do this afternoon, but he’s sure Gokudera won’t mind the unexpected study session, and recently he’s found spending afterschool hours alone with Gokudera at least as rewarding as the easy satisfaction to be had in practice.

Gokudera’s collecting his things into his bag when Yamamoto comes up to the edge of his desk and pauses to wait for the other boy. He only glances up for a moment but it’s enough for Yamamoto to catch the color from his eyes, enough to leave him smiling in the simple joy of closeness while Gokudera finishes collecting his things into his bag.

“You didn’t bring an umbrella today, did you,” Gokudera says without looking up.

Yamamoto laughs, amusement only barely tinged with apology. “Nope.”

“You’re hopeless.” Gokudera flips the top of his bag down, pushes up from his chair and swings the strap up over his shoulder. “I should make you walk back in the rain just to teach you a lesson.”

“Ha, I wouldn’t mind,” Yamamoto says. Gokudera glances at him again, his lips tightening into the shape of the smile that’s never very far from his expression, now, before he ducks his head to the shadow of his hair and takes the lead out of the classroom.

“I know you wouldn’t,” he says as Yamamoto follows. He’s watching the swing of Gokudera’s hand, the easy curl of his fingers as he moves, barely listening the the purr of affectionate teasing under the other’s words. “You’d end up soaked to the skin and still smiling that stupid smile.” Gokudera pauses by the front doors, fishes his own umbrella out of the array of options from the more forward-thinking students. “And then you’d have to change, and probably take a shower, and we’d never get any studying done after all.” When he turns he’s not looking at Yamamoto’s face but at his shoulder, doesn’t look up even when he holds the umbrella out. “At least carry it for us both.”

“Okay,” Yamamoto agrees. This is a familiar burden, more pleasant than troublesome, and fitting together under one cover suggests far more physical contact on the way back than Gokudera usually lets Yamamoto get away with in public.

The excuse is a good one. They’re barely past the front gate when Gokudera heaves a sigh, snaps something about “If you hold it all over me you’ll end up just as wet as without it” and moves in closer, grumbling about the umbrella being plenty big enough for the both of them. The proximity pushes his shoulder in against Yamamoto’s arm, brings his fingertips catching at the bottom edge of Yamamoto’s jacket. He’s so close Yamamoto could turn sideways and kiss his hair, can smell the faint smoky sweetness clinging to the strands gone damp with the humidity.

“Mo-chan.” The sound is low, weighted like a warning, like maybe this isn’t the first time Gokudera has spoken. Yamamoto blinks himself back into attention, looks down from Gokudera’s hair at the green eyes fixed on him. “Have you been listening to me at all?”

“No,” he answers, truthful and instantaneous. Gokudera groans and rolls his eyes, but there’s a twist at his mouth, the oncoming shape of amusement before he looks away to hide it.

“I was saying it’s a good thing we have today off, anyway.” The hand at Yamamoto’s hip is tense, the whole of Gokudera’s arm angled like he’s trying for casual and coming up stiff with self-consciousness. “We need to start thinking about entrance exams for high school.”

“Sure,” Yamamoto says, agreement easy as it always is with Gokudera. “Anything you want.”

“You have to take this seriously, Mo-chan,” Gokudera sighs. “We both have to pass the exam to go to the same school.”

“I know,” Yamamoto says, because he does, he knows how this works even if it still feels far-off and impossibly distant. “It’s fine, I can do it.”

“Not without studying you can’t,” Gokudera insists, tipping his head up to fix Yamamoto with a glare. His eyes are shadowed under the cover of the umbrella, his mouth turned down around the shape of a frown. And Yamamoto knows he’s right, knows that it will take a concerted effort to pass the tests that will come far sooner than feels possible, right now. But at this moment Gokudera is very close, his mouth soft on his expression, and Yamamoto can’t help the way his gaze dips down, the way his lips part on a helpless sigh of want.

He can hear Gokudera’s breath catch, can pick out the shake under the other’s huff of amused disbelief, but Gokudera’s looking away, scattering the potential for public affection and ducking his head as if to protect himself from the possibility.

“You can’t look at me like that,” he says. His fingers shift, one hooking just inside the edge of Yamamoto’s pocket before he pulls away. “It’s not fair to leave all the restraint to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Yamamoto offers. His voice sounds weird, a little shaky and lower than usual. He can feel all his skin flushing hot with anticipation for the denied contact, his attention wholly caught by the silver of Gokudera’s hair and the thought of the mouth he can’t see right now. “I just want to kiss you all the time.”

“You do not,” Gokudera insists. “You can’t possibly be thinking about that every moment of the day.”

“I am,” Yamamoto says. “I can’t help it.”

“Fine,” Gokudera snaps. Yamamoto thinks he’s trying to sound resigned; he sounds more amused, though, a little like his throat is shaking the same way Yamamoto can feel the other’s arm trembling against him. “Here.” His hand comes up, forms into a deliberate variation of one of their baseball signals. “If you want to…” He breaks himself off, clears his throat hard and lets his hand drop. “Just show me that.”

Yamamoto curls his fingers into the signal, holds his hand up. “Like this?”

“Yeah,” Gokudera says, almost before he glances over at the other’s fingers. “You got it.”

“Okay.” Yamamoto lets his hand fall back to his side, looks away from the top of Gokudera’s head and out at the rain-dark sidewalk in front of them.

There’s a pause; then Gokudera clears his throat to start speaking again. “So like I was saying. We can at least start some of the review, since you never remember anything in class anyway.”

“Mm,” Yamamoto hums. Gokudera’s arm is warm against his, the weight of the other’s shoulder leaning into him sending his attention scattering to coalesce around his new favorite daydream.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Gokudera blurts, stops so suddenly Yamamoto nearly walks past him before he can catch his footing. There are fingers closing at his wrist, dragging the shape of his hand up from the half-cover at his side. “It’s been like thirty seconds.”

“Always,” Yamamoto repeats, helpless in the face of Gokudera’s frown and the press of Gokudera’s fingers against his skin. “All day, I swear.”

“We’re never going to get any work done,” Gokudera sighs, more to himself than with any direction to the words, and he’s reaching up, bracing his fingers against the back of Yamamoto’s neck and urging the other down and closer as he tips up. Yamamoto lets himself be pulled, is shutting his eyes as Gokudera’s mouth presses to his, the other boy turning his head to fit their lips closer together. His skin is damp from the moisture in the air, his breathing hot at Yamamoto’s cheek, and Yamamoto is whimpering satisfaction, pleasure warm and rushing through his veins as it does whenever Gokudera kisses him.

He doesn’t notice his hold on the umbrella slipping. It’s Gokudera who makes a muffled noise of protest, pulls away to reach out and grab at the falling handle to straighten the cover back over their somewhat-damper heads.

“Pay attention to what you’re doing, Mo-chan,” he growls.

“I was,” Yamamoto blurts without thinking, still caught incoherent by the afterimage of Gokudera’s lips against his.

Gokudera blinks at him; then he laughs, sudden and surprised, and Yamamoto grins without any real apology, turns his wrist free of Gokudera’s hold so he can catch their fingers together for a moment as he leans back in.

“I thought I wasn’t allowed, in public?”

Gokudera coughs. “Well. There’s no one around anyway.” The touch at Yamamoto’s neck tightens. “Are you  _complaining_?”

Yamamoto shakes his head, quick with certainty, and when Gokudera laughs he can feel the sound at his lips before the sensation is replaced with the warm friction of the other’s mouth.

By the time Gokudera manages to retrieve the umbrella this time, Yamamoto’s hair is dripping against his forehead and Gokudera’s is stained dark by the rain. But Gokudera is smiling, too bright for him to hide just by ducking his head, and if he reclaims his hand from Yamamoto’s hold for the rest of the walk, the lingering heat from the impromptu contact is enough to keep Yamamoto warm over the distance.


	13. Daydreams

Gokudera’s hair is still damp from the shower when Yamamoto comes back into the room, a towel thrown around his shoulders in lieu of actually taking the time to dry his hair. It makes Gokudera frown, foreseeing more water coming his way, and it’s only that expectation that gets his hand up to tangle into Yamamoto’s hair and hold him clear of Gokudera’s still-dry shirt when the other tries to tip forward to hug him.

“You’ll get me wet,” he complains. “You’re lucky my shirt is dry enough to wear, otherwise I’d have to go home to change and our whole afternoon would be lost after all.”

“You could just borrow one of mine,” Yamamoto points out, but he is retreating, disappearing under the white of the towel while he ruffles the cloth up over his head. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Your shirts are all too big on me,” Gokudera points out as he watches the motion of Yamamoto’s fingers against the towel. “And if you leave your hair wet you’ll get sick anyway.”

Yamamoto reemerges, smiling at Gokudera like he’s expecting approval. His hair is indeed drier than it was, but now it’s all on-end, rumpled out of any hope of tidiness. Gokudera heaves a sigh.

“You’re hopeless, Mo-chan,” but he’s reaching out as he speaks, curling his fingers in against the unbuttoned top of Yamamoto’s shirt and tugging to urge the other in closer. Yamamoto doesn’t hesitate to obey, sliding in until his knee is bumping alongside Gokudera’s hip and he can and does stretch out to ghost his fingers against the curve of the other’s waist.

Gokudera’s hands are shaking, trembling faintly even though the way he’s leaning against the edge of the bed disguises the worst of his electric adrenaline. He can hear the patter of the rain blowing against the window, nearly as loud as the soft rhythm of Yamamoto’s breathing and the huff of his laugh when Gokudera grabs at the end of the towel to twist it off and toss it aside.

“Hayato,” Yamamoto says, less like he’s trying to secure Gokudera’s attention and more like he’s tasting the name, shaping it on his tongue and lips like some kind of unconscious seduction. It works, in that it drags Gokudera’s gaze down to the part of the other boy’s lips and curls warm and rich in his stomach, and when he reaches out the ruffled strands of Yamamoto’s hair fit perfectly between his fingers. Yamamoto is smiling, his expression so soft Gokudera is pretty sure it’s unconscious, until the first brush of his lips to the other boy’s mouth is made awkward and glancing from the shape of the other’s happiness.

It’s only for the first moment of contact. Gokudera makes a face, starts to lean back, and then Yamamoto is leaning in to follow him, his smile giving way to the soft part of his lips. His hair is feathery against Gokudera’s fingers, his shirt crisp enough that it’s wrinkling under the other’s hold, and his other hand is moving as it always does, Yamamoto’s fingers drawn in against Gokudera’s hair like the strands have some sort of strange magnetism for him.

They pull apart for a moment, Gokudera unconsciously licking at the heat of friction against his lips while Yamamoto’s eyes trail the movement of his fingers. The contact against Gokudera’s scalp is gentle, careful against the unusual catch of the moisture at Yamamoto’s fingers, and Yamamoto is laughing at Gokudera’s mouth, leaning in closer until their foreheads bump together.

“Your hair’s still wet too,” he says, his eyelashes shifting so Gokudera can watch his gaze slide down to land on his lips again. “What if you get sick?”

“Shut up,” Gokudera suggests, tips his chin up to press his mouth flush to Yamamoto’s for a moment. “It’s dry enough.” Another kiss, longer this time; when he pulls back Yamamoto’s eyes are closed, the other boy’s breathing coming hard enough to overwhelm the ambient sound of the rain. “You were supposed to keep us dry in the first place.”

“Mm,” Yamamoto says without opening his eyes. “Sorry.” His fingers shift in Gokudera’s hair, fitting in against the strands and sending heat flickering down Gokudera’s spine. When he opens his eyes he’s so close Gokudera can see the radiating lines of color in the irises, the brown so dark it’s almost black together with the pale gold more familiar from a distance. They stare at each other for a minute, Yamamoto’s gaze hazy while Gokudera’s breathing stalls in his chest, and then Yamamoto leans in again, kisses slow sucking pressure to Gokudera’s lower lip. Gokudera’s the one who shuts his eyes this time, the ache of pleasure so strong it’s nearly painful in his chest, until when Yamamoto pulls away he doesn’t remember the topic until the other speaks.

“You were just so...” Fingers tightening in his hair, the gust of a laugh across his mouth. Gokudera blinks his vision back, lets his hold at Yamamoto’s shirt go in favor of grabbing for the other boy’s hip. When he pulls Yamamoto tips sideways, lets his weight drop over Gokudera’s legs until he’s half on the other boy’s lap. He’s smiling again, ducking in like he’s ready for another kiss before he remembers himself. “I’m so distracted by you.”

“You’re useless,” Gokudera says, the words turning warm and affectionate over his tongue before he intends them to. “You’re with me all day, how are you ever going to get anything done if you get like this?”

Yamamoto hums, the sound soothing in spite of the complete lack of explanation he is offering. Gokudera can’t help smiling, sliding his hand to ruffle Yamamoto’s hair even more out-of-order than it is already, and Yamamoto tips his head to lean into the contact. He’s blinking meltingly slowly, his eyes so far out-of-focus Gokudera isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to come back to attention. When his fingers slip farther into Gokudera’s hair Gokudera turns his face away, unspoken offer of the line of his neck to the other boy. He’s learned quickly that this is apparently irresistible to Yamamoto, and today is no exception; Yamamoto’s eyelashes flutter, his mouth curves into a smile, and when he leans in Gokudera shuts his eyes to the feather-soft brush of Yamamoto’s lips on his skin.

Yamamoto lingers there for a while, marking the heat of his mouth all along Gokudera’s throat and up under his ear, fitting kisses under the weight of the other boy’s hair. Gokudera doesn’t move, doesn’t protest or pull away or do anything except hold onto Yamamoto’s hair as the tingling satisfaction of the friction shivers down against his spine. Yamamoto is kissing out over his cheek, trailing in closer to Gokudera’s lips again, and Gokudera turns in to meet him just as Yamamoto takes a breath and says, “Let’s stay together forever.”

Gokudera opens his eyes, frowns in brief disappointment at the delay of the kiss he was expecting. “Were you planning on going somewhere?”

Yamamoto laughs in spite of the snap to Gokudera’s words, leans in to sigh against the other boy’s neck. Gokudera wants to be mad about this interruption, would stay irritated if he could, but he’s melting as fast as he always does, no better at resisting Yamamoto now than he ever has been in all the time they’ve known each other.

“No,” Yamamoto says, slides his fingers farther into Gokudera’s hair and leans in closer against the other boy’s shoulders. “I mean when we’re older. Like we were going to, with baseball.”

“This is  _totally_  different than with baseball,” Gokudera protests weakly. “You wanted me to play baseball with you professionally, now you’re not even bothering with an excuse to stay together.”

“It’s not different,” Yamamoto says. His hand at Gokudera’s waist slides sideways, his arm loops around the other boy to pull them in closer together. “It was always the same thing, I think.”

Gokudera huffs the most frustrated sigh he can manage under the circumstances, rolls his eyes where Yamamoto can’t see him. “You’re absurd, Mo-chan,” he declares. “At least that hasn’t changed.”

Yamamoto laughs, lifts his head to gaze dreamily at Gokudera. He looks happier than Gokudera has ever seen him, like his usual optimism has permeated down into his very soul and turned him into pure affectionate delight. “We should live together,” he says, slow and hazy with heat, and that’s when he finally leans in to kiss Gokudera’s mouth again. Gokudera shuts his eyes to the friction, whines faint protest, and pulls back before they can get too completely off-subject.

“We should get into high school first,” he says, mustering all the restraint he can with Yamamoto draped over his lap and still smiling contagious contentment. “Which means  _you_  should study instead of daydreaming about living with me.”

“We could wake up together,” Yamamoto goes on, completely ignoring Gokudera’s statement. Gokudera would be mad if his skin didn’t flush hot at Yamamoto’s words, if his thoughts didn’t skid sideways into fantasy so clear he can almost see it in front of him, a filter turning the familiarity of Yamamoto’s room into a shared apartment for the both of them.

“Idiot,” he says, but the word is weak and trembling on his lips. “You’d be useless all the time.”

“I could cook for you,” Yamamoto goes on, and he’s turning his head to rest the weight at Gokudera’s shoulder. It’s a little easier, without his eyes fixed on Gokudera’s face, easier to fight back the flush of self-consciousness that is rushing out over Gokudera at the sound of the other’s words. “You hate cooking, I could do it for you. I could make you anything you wanted.”

“No you couldn’t,” Gokudera protests. It sounds weak even to his own ears. “You can’t cook at all.”

“I’ll learn,” Yamamoto declares. “I’ll learn for you, Hayato, it’ll be fun.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gokudera says. His cheeks feel permanently flushed, now. “What would be fun about living in some tiny apartment with you underfoot all the time?”

“It would be so nice to come home to you,” Yamamoto says, and Gokudera has to shut his eyes to the clarity of the image, has to pause for a moment until he can speak past the knot in his throat.

“Idiot,” he says, careful on the familiar shape of the word. “I come home with you basically every day anyway.”

Yamamoto hums, the placating noise that means he avoiding an argument but isn’t convinced. For once Gokudera lets it go. It’s easier to turn in towards the gold of his eyes, to duck his head to kiss the pleasure off Yamamoto’s mouth until the other boy sighs happiness and opens his mouth for Gokudera’s tongue. The heat helps, soothes some of the weirdly painful ache in Gokudera’s chest, like he’s homesick for something he’s never had, something he didn’t even know to want until Yamamoto said it.

Yamamoto’s always been good at anticipating what he wants.


	14. Present

“You’re still moving your wrist too much,” Gokudera shouts as he stands to toss the baseball back to Yamamoto. “It’s just one clean movement, none of the extra stuff you’re adding on.”

“Got it!” Yamamoto steps back, takes a breath to steady himself, lets it out slowly. Gokudera is dropping back into a crouch, holding his mitt out for a simple fastball without bothering with a signal. They only have a few minutes before they need to go back out anyway; the whole point is to warm up, not to truly practice.

Gokudera doesn’t say anything after the second pitch, or the third, just throws the ball back and waits for Yamamoto’s next throw. Neither of them speak; there’s an easy rhythm to the motions, the comfort of familiarity in the actions until they feel like a dance, until Yamamoto can let his thoughts wander while he swings his arm through the smooth motions of pitching.

They are going to lose. There’s no real question of it, at this point, not when their opponent has a five-run lead and they only have a pair of innings left. The team never had much hope at winning this, the last stop on their attempt at the nationals, and Yamamoto has a flash of guilt at his gratitude that the pinch they’re in has resulted in the backup battery being called out just for the sake of trying something new. It doesn’t matter how well he pitches, really; it’s just the last opportunity to stand on the field before high school, future possibilities still so incomprehensible they feel infinitely distant and impossible to consider. It’s easier for Yamamoto to lose himself in the stretch of his arm, the swing of his shoulder as he pitches straight to Gokudera, the pleasure of the present moment enough to overwhelm the bittersweet loss approaching.

Gokudera is getting to his feet, lifting his arm to toss back, when there’s movement, one of their teammates coming around the edge of the dugout. They both know what that means, don’t need to hear “You’re up” before Gokudera is tossing the ball aside, before Yamamoto is taking a breath in the rush of excitement that always hits him before he goes out onto the field. They fall into step with each other as they head out to the diamond, the ambient sound of the audience and the other players enough to drown out any attempt at conversation. Yamamoto doesn’t know how it is that he hears Gokudera’s “Do good, Mo-chan” over the shouts and the pattern of the cheers, but when he looks sideways Gokudera is watching him, his eyes already sad with the oncoming ending.

So Yamamoto smiles, lets all his joy in the game radiate out into the curve of his mouth and crease into his eyes. Gokudera blinks, some of the shadow clearing away, and if he weren’t wearing his helmet Yamamoto would kiss him, would duck in over the gap between them regardless of their teammates and their opponents and the audience in the bleachers. The urge is so strong he starts to lean in an inch before he catches himself, draws back with the edge of an apology to his lips while Gokudera’s expression breaks into a laugh before he looks away and out at the field.

It’s too far away to see the expression on Gokudera’s face once Yamamoto takes up his position on the pitcher’s mound. The crowd falls silent with anticipation as the batter steps up, takes a practice swing before setting himself, but Yamamoto isn’t watching the batter or the audience. He’s staring at Gokudera, watching the considering tilt of the other boy’s head as he strategizes before he looks back out at Yamamoto and signals for an inside curveball. Yamamoto nods, willing to follow Gokudera’s lead in this as in everything else, but the other boy’s fingers are still moving, forming into a different signal, one so familiar in the different context of the classroom it takes Yamamoto a moment to piece together the angle of the other’s fingers, the shape of his thumb into the gesture that means  _I want to kiss you_.

Yamamoto can’t help the startled delight in his laughter. It just bubbles up in his throat, fizzing like warm carbonation through his blood, and he doesn’t need to be able to make out Gokudera’s expression to know that he’s smirking. One more signal, from school again, this one  _pay attention_ , and then Gokudera is lifting his mitt and rocking his weight forward in expectation.

Yamamoto is still smiling when he steps back to wind up for his pitch. This might be their last game in junior high, but the sun is warm on his skin, and the ball is heavy in his hand, and there’s no one he’d rather be watching than Gokudera.


	15. Trust

“ _No_ ,” Gokudera snaps for the third time, reaches out to drag Yamamoto’s practice sheet entirely out of his hands. “No, you have to subtract first and  _then_  divide, you can’t mix those up or it doesn’t work.”

“Sorry,” Yamamoto says. He doesn’t make any effort to retain the paper; when Gokudera looks up the other boy has his mouth tight in concentration and his hands folded in his lap, is staring at Gokudera’s fingers like watching the other solve the math problem will somehow grant him perfect understanding. There’s no judgement in his face, nothing at all except dedicated concentration, but Gokudera still flinches from the press of guilt, the ache of apology hot on his tongue.

“Let’s take a break,” he says with no transition, pushes the paper aside and slides back from the table. Yamamoto tracks the paper for a moment, a little slow to shift his frame of reference, and when he looks up his eyes are hazy and out-of-focus. He looks exhausted, his shoulders slumping forward like Gokudera has almost never seen them, and the hurt in Gokudera’s chest swells bigger, crushes out into him until he’s grimacing from the responsibility of causing that expression on Yamamoto’s face.

“Come here,” he says, reaching out for Yamamoto’s wrist, and the worst of the stress at Yamamoto’s forehead eases away at his touch, the worst of the tension in his shoulders relaxes as he crawls around the edge of the table to fit himself into the offer of Gokudera’s arms. His head drops against Gokudera’s shoulder, the soft of his hair catching at the other’s skin, and Gokudera turns in to match him, sighs a breath that feels like an apology on his tongue.

“We should have stopped earlier,” he admits. Yamamoto’s arms come around him in lieu of an answer, the weight of the other boy’s body leaning heavily into him like Yamamoto can’t manage to sit upright on his own. “You’re not used to these marathon study sessions.”

“Mm, it’s okay,” Yamamoto says against Gokudera’s shirt. His voice is soft, completely absent the edge of judgment that might make it easier to bear. “I have to focus on exams.”

It’s uncanny, to hear Gokudera’s own words turned around and recited back in Yamamoto’s voice. It makes him cringe again, shut his eyes and press his mouth against the top of the other’s head until he can breathe again, can trust his voice not to break.

“Mo-chan,” he says, the familiar syllables shaking themselves into anxious heat in his throat. “Mo-chan, what if we don’t--”

“We will,” Yamamoto says, fast, like if Gokudera doesn’t put words to it the possibility can’t become a reality. “I will, I’ll pass and I’ll come to high school with you.” His arms tighten, some fragile sound in his throat muffled into incoherency against Gokudera’s shirt. “I promise you, Hayato.”

Gokudera doesn’t speak. He can’t put words to the panic in his chest, can’t lie his way to easy agreement with Yamamoto’s words and can’t offer the crushing hurt that voicing his worry would bring. So he stays still instead, with Yamamoto’s arms tangled around him and his lips pressed to the familiar darkness of the other’s hair, keeps his eyes shut to the threat of the future and breathes Yamamoto into his lungs like he’s never going to let him go.

He can’t trust to tomorrow the way Yamamoto can. Every morning carries the danger of the unknown with it, too much uncertainty for Gokudera to blindly trust to fate to lead him to safety. But Yamamoto insists that they’ll be okay, and even though Gokudera knows he has no reason for that it’s easy to believe the steadiness in his voice, easy to think maybe Yamamoto knows something Gokudera doesn’t.

It’s always been easy to trust Yamamoto.


	16. Sure

Gokudera is waiting for Yamamoto when he comes out of the exams.

It’s not hard to spot him; the hallway is empty, absent of any lingering students except for the figure slouched alongside the door, his head bowed into shadow and hands stuffed into his pockets. Yamamoto just looks at the other boy for a moment, caught somewhere between pain at the stress written into the slump of Gokudera’s shoulders and simple joy at seeing him, until the door shutting behind him startles them both and brings Gokudera’s gaze up to land on Yamamoto’s face.

“Mo-chan,” he breathes, as breathless as if he’s been running. His eyes are very soft, his mouth nearly trembling as he stares at Yamamoto, still leaning against the wall like he can’t stand upright. “How did it go?”

“I--” Yamamoto starts, stalls. He wants to offer reassurance, wants to soothe all the stress out of Gokudera’s forehead and straighten the weighted-down angle of his shoulders, but he can’t manage a convincing lie, has to stick with the less-than-comforting truth. “I’m not sure.”

Gokudera blinks, sighs, and after a moment he pushes off the wall and starts down the hallway, moving with perfect assurance that Yamamoto will fall into step behind him. It’s not unjustified; Yamamoto is right at his heels, close enough that his fingers brush the edge of Gokudera’s jeans as they move, close enough that he can look down and watch the shift of silver in Gokudera’s hair instead of paying attention to where they’re going.

“I finished all the questions,” Yamamoto offers, talking to the strain in Gokudera’s spine and the shine of sunlight off his hair. “I’m just not sure if they were right.”

Gokudera forces a laugh. “Even if you thought they were, that’s no guarantee of anything. You can’t be trusted with things like this.” He pauses for a moment to let Yamamoto catch up, catches at the other boy’s hand with so much casual disregard it take Yamamoto a moment before he realizes Gokudera’s interlacing their fingers, pressing their hands together with no apparent intention of letting go. It makes him smile, even with the exhaustion of the tests and the worry of the results hovering over them both, brings him swinging in closer to lean against Gokudera’s shoulder.

“Did you do good?” he asks, the words near-meaningless but worth saying, if only for the way Gokudera scoffs amusement at him.

“Of course I did,” and they’re stopping, there’s another hand swinging around to gently punch him. Yamamoto curls around the impact, laughing more out of relief than anything else, and Gokudera’s grinning, looking up through his hair to mock-glare at the other boy. “It was a piece of cake.”

“Mm, that’s just because you’re so smart, Hayato,” Yamamoto says. He’s leaning down, he can’t help it, Gokudera’s mouth is too much of a temptation, and Gokudera huffs and rolls his eyes but he doesn’t pull away, he turns his head up instead to let Yamamoto brush a kiss against his lips.

“Don’t try to butter me up with compliments,” he growls as Yamamoto pulls back, lingering as close as he can get under the circumstances. Gokudera’s fingers are digging into Yamamoto’s hand, his hold so tight it’s nearly painful, but Yamamoto doesn’t make any effort to pull away, just squeezes right back against the familiar shape of Gokudera’s hand. “You know how much trouble you’re going to be in if you didn’t pass.”

“I’ll pass,” Yamamoto says, the promise that has become a mantra over the last months. “I will, you taught me everything, I’ll pass.”

Gokudera’s forehead creases, his laugh coming out a little strained and skeptical. “You just said you weren’t sure how you did,” he points out. “How can you be so certain now?”

“I’m going to stay with you,” Yamamoto says, turning his head so he can press his nose against Gokudera’s hair and breathe in against it. “So I’m going to pass.”

“How are you so  _sure_?” Gokudera demands. This time his fist carries more weight, enough that it makes Yamamoto lose his breath all in a rush before the other’s fingers uncurl to slide in against Yamamoto’s back. “You always sound  _so sure_ , it doesn’t make any sense.” The weight of Gokudera’s head lands at Yamamoto’s shoulder, his arm looping around Yamamoto’s back like he’s trying to cling to the other for support. It’s only for a moment that he’s dragging Yamamoto in closer, pressing his face hard against the other boy’s shirt; then he lets go and moves away all at once, stepping back and turning away to face back down the hallway. His hand lingers, though, his fingers laced together with Yamamoto’s in complete disregard of anyone that might see them.

That’s enough to make Yamamoto smile, the brighter when Gokudera doesn’t let him go as they make it outside and start the walk back to his home and the promise of post-exam sushi. It’s several blocks, with nothing like enough shadows to hide the tangle of their hands from anyone who might walk or drive past them, and usually Gokudera drags his hand free as soon as they step outside with some huffed protest about being subtle. But today he’s holding tighter than Yamamoto, keeps their contact the whole way back to the other boy’s home, and even though Yamamoto can feel the stress that is drawing Gokudera’s fingers tense around his, he can’t stop smiling.

As long as he has Gokudera with him, he can’t imagine anything going wrong.


	17. Results

Gokudera’s been waiting for almost an hour by the time the knock comes.

He’s been expecting it. The steady thud of raindrops against the roof has been enough to drown out the patter of approaching footsteps, but he didn’t need a phone call to let him know to expect a visitor. The exam results unfolded in front of him more than did that, promising him the acceptance he knew to expect and offering none of the relief they might bring to someone else. He can’t relax, not until he  _knows_ , and in the slow slide of minutes passing he has been left to the shadows in the corner of the room, the single point of light overhead steadily becoming more and more necessary as night begins to fall around the darkness of the continuing rain.

He’s expecting it, but it’s still hard to react when the knock comes. His legs ache from his hunched-in position on the couch in the middle of the room, his mind skids out on over-analyzing, until by the time he’s getting to his feet he’s moving slow with dread, convinced that the tentative sound promises bad news as soon as he pulls the door open. Even when he reaches it he pauses, lets his fingers linger at the handle while foreboding swamps him, drowns the last of his borrowed optimism, until he’s sure he can’t be surprised by anything.

Then he opens the door, and sees Yamamoto’s face, and the lack of a smile, and he realizes he was desperately wrong about how much hope he had left to lose.

“Mo-chan,” he says, his lips going numb even as he speaks. Yamamoto is drenched, his shirt clinging to his shoulders and his hair dripping and plastered flat to his head by the rain, breathing hard like maybe he ran the whole way here. Gokudera looks away from his face -- he can’t stand to see the lack of a smile on the other’s lips, can’t bear to look for the sparkle of hope absent in those gold eyes -- down to the paper clutched in the other boy’s hand. “Are those your results?”

Yamamoto holds them out without speaking. Gokudera takes the paper, hesitates again before unfolding it. It’s as wet as Yamamoto himself, soaked through with the steady downpour outside, until he has to be careful in unfolding it to keep it from tearing through at the creases. He’s frowning at that, huffing frustration at Yamamoto for forgetting an umbrella, so caught up in his expectations of disappointment that it takes him a minute to process what he’s seeing.

He’s very sure that his heart skips a beat, when he takes in the meaning of the ink on the page. If his lips were numb before now it’s his whole body, tingling through and through with electricity overriding any more sensitive feeling. He reads the paper again, a third time, a fourth, and his hands are starting to shake, his throat is going tight, and then he looks up and Yamamoto is smiling so bright Gokudera forgets that it’s raining.

“You--” he starts, and Yamamoto blurts, “I did it, Hayato,” his voice low and shaking with more emotion than Gokudera’s ever heard in it before. “Look,” and he’s pointing, vague gesturing towards the page as if maybe Gokudera can’t see it. “I passed, we’re going to high school together.”

Gokudera doesn’t know what he does with the paper. It’s critical, really, it ought to be stored away safely so he can look at it again when he starts to doubt his own reality, but in the first shuddering jolt of joy it’s gone, dropped or thrown aside he doesn’t know which, because he needs both his hands to reach out for Yamamoto and pull him down into a kiss. The other boy is smiling as Gokudera steps in to press against him, breathing hard enough that it interrupts the line of their mouths coming together, but Gokudera doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about that or the chill of Yamamoto’s skin under his hands or the fact that his own shirt is going damp from secondhand contact with Yamamoto’s. The only thing that matters is right under his hands, is here with him and isn’t going anywhere, and for the first time in months Gokudera can actually believe that. It feels bizarre to lose that constant source of stress, as if he has been bracing for a fall off a cliff that turned out to be solid ground, the relief so strong he’s trembling all through his body and can’t stop even when Yamamoto’s arms come around him to pull him in closer. Yamamoto’s lips are wet, his skin cold and his mouth hot, and they’re on the front step and in plain sight of everyone and Gokudera doesn’t care at all.

“I can’t believe you did it,” he says when they break apart to gasp for air. Yamamoto’s eyes are fixed on his mouth, he’s breathing like he’s still running, and Gokudera has to kiss him again, a rushed slide of lips and tongues before he can recover enough to keep talking. “You idiot,  _my_  idiot, I can’t  _believe_  you did it after all.”

“I told you I would,” Yamamoto says. When Gokudera takes a step back Yamamoto trails him, stumbling forward until they’re in the warm-lit interior of the house and not the dim shadows of the front step. “I promised you.”

“You did,” Gokudera agrees, letting Yamamoto go long enough to drag the door shut behind them. “But I didn’t think…”

“Can we stay together?” Yamamoto asks, pleads, his voice trembling in his throat to match Gokudera’s hands. “Please, Hayato, move in with me, we can get an apartment and live together.”

Gokudera is laughing, helpless to the force of joy rushing through him. “Okay,” he says, easy, without even having to think about it. “We’re going to starve, you know.”

Yamamoto shakes his head, smiling so wide when he leans in he can barely manage to kiss the corner of Gokudera’s mouth. “No, I’ll cook, I’ll make everything you like best.” He’s holding to Gokudera’s hips, pulling the other in with a motion Gokudera is pretty sure is unconscious, ducking his head to stay as close to the other boy as he can. “We can do the dishes together, we can study together, we can wake up together.”

“You’re  _so_  ridiculous, Mo-chan,” Gokudera declares, but he’s laughing, he can’t stop smiling, he can’t remember ever being this happy in his life. “Come to my room, you’re going to get sick in those clothes.”

“Okay,” Yamamoto says, but he’s kissing Gokudera again, shutting his eyes and ducking in close until Gokudera can’t manage to step away immediately, has to dig his fingers into the inky wet of Yamamoto’s hair and pull him in hard before he can persuade himself to stumble backwards and take Yamamoto’s hand instead of clinging to his shoulder. Even then he takes the hallway all but backwards, spending more time looking back at the boy trailing in his wake than paying any attention to where he’s going. It’s just too hard to look away from the shine of Yamamoto’s gaze, the apparently irrepressible smile clinging to his lips, until by the time they make it to the bedroom Gokudera has to pause to kiss the other again before he’s even managed to fumble the light on.

“God,” he says as illumination fills the room, reaching out to push his fingers up against the soaked-through hem of Yamamoto’s shirt. “Why didn’t you get an umbrella?”

Yamamoto shrugs, grins half of an apology. “I didn’t think about it,” he admits. The shirt clings to his skin as Gokudera keeps pushing it up, and it’s not like Gokudera hasn’t seen Yamamoto’s skin before but this is different, this feels like the first time for the rest of their lives, now. “I wanted to tell you.”

“You scared me,” Gokudera admits. The shirt catches under Yamamoto’s arms before the other lets his touch at Gokudera’s waist go and lifts his hands so his shirt can peel free of his shoulders. “You looked so serious when I opened the door I thought…”

“Sorry,” Yamamoto says. When Gokudera looks up he looks impossibly tall, his shoulders wider than Gokudera remembers them and his eyes softer. His gaze drops to Gokudera’s mouth, clings there as Yamamoto licks his lips and lifts a hand to ruffle through his hair. The slide of his tongue against his mouth burns through Gokudera like fire, offers a whole array of mismatched images and ideas that settle into the pit of his stomach like they’re all a single knot of want. “I wasn’t thinking about what I looked like. I just needed to tell you.”

“Fuck,” Gokudera blurts, the word sticking in his throat. He reaches out for Yamamoto’s skin, fits his fingers against the curve of the other boy’s waist; the damp of the rain is drying already, evaporating fast in the inside warmth of the house. “I’m…” He flinches from the surge of heat under his skin, the ache of want in his chest, pressure from too much to say and a lack of words for any of it. “I’m so  _glad_.”

“Hayato,” Yamamoto says. When Gokudera looks up Yamamoto is leaning in for him, rain-chilled fingers catching into his hair, and then they’re kissing again like they were on the front step, as frantic and rushed as if their time is something other than endless. Gokudera’s teeth scrape Yamamoto’s lip, Yamamoto’s tongue slips over Gokudera’s mouth, and they’re closer, Yamamoto stepped in or maybe Gokudera did, both of them edging in farther until Gokudera’s damp shirt is catching against Yamamoto’s chest.

“You’re wet too,” Yamamoto says against Gokudera’s mouth. One of his hands frees itself from Gokudera’s hair, the warmth of his fingertips sliding up under the other’s shirt just enough to be the outline of a suggestion.

Gokudera’s chest goes tight, his breath stalling in his lungs. But “You’re right,” is what he says, and what he does is to stumble backwards the half-step he needs to catch at his shirt and drag it up and off all at once. This isn’t special either, or shouldn’t be; they’ve changed in front of each other dozens of times, maybe hundreds, years of friendship and months of sports practices combining until spending entire afternoons together in t-shirts and boxers has been more than normal. But now Gokudera can’t breathe, and he can’t stop flushing, he can feel every inch of his bare skin like it’s written over with the suggestion he wants it to have.

“Hayato--” Yamamoto says, faint and breathless, and Gokudera takes a breath and looks up to meet the nervous uncertainty in Yamamoto’s eyes.

“I want--” he starts, stalls before he can find the words. It’s easier to reach out, to press his hand to Yamamoto’s waist and let it slide down until the motion becomes clear suggestion, until his fingertips catch at the heavy weight of the wet denim.

Gokudera can hear Yamamoto’s startled exhale, the air rushing out of his lungs like he’s forgotten how to breathe. Its answer in itself, well before the touch at his shoulder or the lips against his hair, Yamamoto kissing against him as he says, “Yeah,” and “Me too,” talking as quietly as if it’s a secret. It makes Gokudera laugh, even if the sound is a little bit shaky with nervousness

“Okay,” he says, takes a breath, lets it out. “Okay.” He lets his hand linger against Yamamoto’s pants, right at the hip where he can feel the heat of the other boy’s body radiant through the denim. “Take your jeans off.”

Yamamoto’s laughing when Gokudera takes a half-step back, ducking his head with something that looks a little like nervousness. “I did get them wet.” He’s toeing his sneakers off, pushing them to the corner of the room, and Gokudera is staring at the movement of Yamamoto’s hands at the front of his jeans for long seconds before he can collect himself to respond.

“Yeah,” he growls, “You got me wet too, idiot.”

“Ha,” Yamamoto says. “Sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Gokudera insists, ducks his head to watch his hands as he works his belt buckle open and tugs at his button and zipper. His hands are still trembling, anxiety written into every moment of his fingers, but it’s not a difficult task, and the faint damp of his jeans makes them infinitely easier to take off than Yamamoto’s soaked ones. He’s just stepping free when Yamamoto makes a faint noise of frustration, moves to sit on the floor so he can drag the denim down and off his feet with enough force to completely ruin any elegance the movement might have had. It’s a relief to remember that this is Yamamoto, after all, that Gokudera knows him and that nothing really has changed. It makes Gokudera laugh, loud enough that Yamamoto looks up to blink at him, and then he’s stepping in to offer a hand and pull the other boy to his feet.

“Come on,” and this is easy too, taking the lead to pull Yamamoto towards the bed as simple as signaling him to a particular pitch in the middle of a game. “I don’t know what you’re going to wear home, my clothes barely even fit you anymore.”

“They’ll dry,” Yamamoto says, following in Gokudera’s wake, and then Gokudera is dropping to sit on the bed and turning back. Yamamoto starts to follow, reaching out for Gokudera’s shoulder to brace himself, and it’s only the other boy grabbing at his hip to stop him that brings him up short.

“You’re soaked straight through,” Gokudera says, and if his mouth is going dry he thinks that can probably be forgiven under the circumstances. “You’ll get the blankets wet like this.” It’s an excuse, even if it’s completely true, feels like the suggestion it is on his tongue. Yamamoto hesitates, like he’s not quite sure what Gokudera means, and Gokudera slides his fingers under the waistband of the other boy’s wet boxers and starts to push them down without waiting for understanding to sink into Yamamoto’s thoughts. They cling as badly as the shirt, as badly as the jeans, stick to Yamamoto’s skin as they come down, but Gokudera is paying more attention to the way Yamamoto is starting to tremble under his touch and the fact that the other boy is half-hard as Gokudera gets his clothes off than anything to do with the clothes themselves.

“Move,” Gokudera snaps, more sharply than he intends, and Yamamoto takes a step away from the bed so the other can push the clothes to the floor. Then Yamamoto is stepping free and Gokudera can’t stall anymore, there’s nothing to think about other than the stunning amount of bare skin in front of him and the fact that he’s flushing hard against his own boxers just from the very idea of contact.

It’s easier to touch. His hands fit into the creases at Yamamoto’s hips, his thumbs press perfectly against suntanned skin, and when he leans forward to press his mouth to the other boy’s stomach Yamamoto makes a whining noise and curls in over him like he’s going to fall. Gokudera isn’t sure if he actually will, doesn’t want to risk it in any case, so he pushes Yamamoto sideways and turns himself and they’re both toppling onto the bed, Yamamoto falling onto his back to lie spread out over Gokudera’s pale sheets and Gokudera turning in over him, their knees fitting together effortlessly as he kneels between Yamamoto’s legs. Yamamoto is breathing hard, his eyes not quite in focus, and it’s reminding Gokudera of the first time they kissed and sparking heat all down his spine.

“Hayato,” Yamamoto breathes, and his fingers are dragging over the other boy’s boxers, pushing against the thin fall of the fabric. “You’re hard.”

Gokudera chokes a laugh, shoves his hand sideways over Yamamoto’s stomach so he can angle his wrist down to bump against the other boy’s length. “So are you, Mo-chan.”

That gets him a smile, dreamy and slow, a flutter of dark lashes and the quick motion of Yamamoto licking his lips. “Can I…?”

“You never listen,” Gokudera complains, and his heart is pounding in his chest and his hand is shaking and he can’t think of anything but this exact present moment, all the past and future are collapsing together into heat in him. “Didn’t I say I wanted this?” And he’s moving, sliding his hand down until it’s too late to back out, it’s too late to panic, and his fingers are closing around Yamamoto’s cock and he can’t think straight. Yamamoto’s eyes shut, his entire expression goes slack for a moment, and Gokudera’s isn’t sure if that’s good or not but when he moves his hand the sound that pours up Yamamoto’s throat is unquestionably encouraging.

“ _Hayato_ ,” and he’s moving too, his fingers fumbling against Gokudera’s boxers until there’s pressure against the other boy too, the heat of Yamamoto’s palm grinding in against him.

“Jesus,” Gokudera gasps, and there’s fire prickling through all his veins, he’s rocking in for more contact without thinking and they’re falling together, he’s landing on top of Yamamoto and Yamamoto is reaching out to hold him there, tipping his chin up for a kiss. Gokudera isn’t sure who’s doing what; his hand is caught between them but he’s still moving, stroking up with his hand as much as he can manage, and he can feel every shudder of reaction run through Yamamoto like he’s controlling the other boy’s body. They’re barely even kissing, less deliberate contact than gasping against each other’s mouths, and then Yamamoto gets his hand free and pushes Gokudera’s boxers down and there’s the impossible heat of skin-to-skin contact.

Gokudera doesn’t know which of them moves -- if he falls sideways or if it’s Yamamoto twisting under him. Maybe it’s a mutual effort, the two of them falling into sync as they so often do, sliding until they’re facing each other, legs tangled together and Yamamoto’s hold keeping Gokudera close in against him. Gokudera lets his grip on Yamamoto’s cock go for a moment, leaning back enough that he can look down to coordinate their movements; it takes some doing, a little shifting against the bed and the breathless half-formed order of “ _Move_ , Mo-chan, just--” before Gokudera can pull Yamamoto’s hand where he wants it, but then it all falls into place, the texture of Yamamoto’s fingers pressing them in against each other, and Gokudera looks up to see Yamamoto’s face go slack and overheated again.

He can’t help but kiss him. It throws off his attention, makes it harder to settle his grip into sync with Yamamoto’s as they start to move, but it’s worth it, Gokudera can feel how hard Yamamoto is breathing from the heat of the other boy’s exhales against his lips. He’s arching in closer himself, can feel the heat of his skin catching at the damp-warmth of Yamamoto’s, and they are falling into rhythm, finding out a pattern somewhere between Gokudera’s rushed movements and Yamamoto’s slow strokes. Gokudera’s trembling against the bed, his head is filled with heat and his breathing is coming shallow and taut, and he can feel Yamamoto’s fingers tightening against his back, the other’s hold drawing tighter around their lengths to press them closer together. He can’t speak, words are wholly absent, but Yamamoto is taking a breath, inhaling so deep and deliberately Gokudera thinks he might be about to come, is leaning in to be close enough to feel the shudder of sensation through the other. But it’s not that, he’s speaking instead, blurting “I love you, Hayato,” and Gokudera’s orgasm hits him with no warning at all, like the words were some sort of trigger for his body. He jerks against the bed, splashes hot over Yamamoto’s wrist and the top sheets, and Yamamoto keeps stroking them even as Gokudera’s movements go slack and shaky. It feels like he’s drawing all the heat up out of Gokudera’s body, pulling the ripples of satisfaction long and endless, and then Yamamoto sighs, a breathless noise of relief against Gokudera’s lips, and trembles into pleasure against the other boy.

They’re both still for the first few seconds, silent but for the frantic gasp of their breathing and the faint sticky catch of skin against skin. Then Gokudera lets his hold go slack, and when he blinks himself back into attention Yamamoto is staring at him, his eyes as wide and starstruck as he looked the first day they met.

“God,” Gokudera says, startled by how faint his voice sounds. “We should do that again.”

Yamamoto’s smile is slow and soft, spreading out across his whole face and dimpling in his cheeks. He barely manages to get out “Yeah” before he’s leaning in to kiss at Gokudera’s mouth, pressing his lips to the corner of the other boy’s like he can’t stand the lack of contact, and Gokudera shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath to steady himself.

“I love you too, Mo-chan,” he offers. He can hear the way Yamamoto’s breathing catches, can feel himself starting to flush before he opens his eyes to see the shocked-silent glaze in the other’s expression. It’s the lingering pleasure in him that makes it easy to laugh past the burn of self-consciousness, that makes it simple to duck in and press his nose to the corner of Yamamoto’s mouth. “You should have known already, idiot.” This makes Yamamoto laugh, like it was supposed to, at least until Gokudera turns his head up to catch the other boy’s mouth with a kiss.

It’s a while before either of them say anything coherent again, longer still until they make it to the shower to rinse clean. It’s not like they need to hurry, not with the whole of their future before them.


	18. Home

“There’s  _really_  not much moved in yet,” Yamamoto reminds Gokudera as they turn off the main street and head for the tiny apartment complex just visible from the street. “It’s not very big and I don’t even have the dishes unpacked yet, there’s not a lot to see.”

Gokudera glances back at him, raises an eyebrow and flashes a smirk of white teeth. “Are you trying to convince me to go back to Bianchi’s place for the night?” he asks, fingers drawing tighter at Yamamoto’s hand. “You’re the one who wanted to move in together for high school. We’re in high school now, right?”

Yamamoto doesn’t even try to hold back the smile that spreads over his face. “Yeah,” he agrees easily. “We are.”

“Then this is home now,” Gokudera insists. He hesitates by the foot of the stairs, glances back before Yamamoto can recall himself enough to point to the door at the top of the short flight, the sun-faded blue of the paint looking faintly purple in the bright light. Gokudera takes the lead after this confirmation, moving up the steps so fast Yamamoto has to nearly run to keep pace, though neither of them lets his hold on the other’s hand go. “Though you  _did_  promise to feed me, you know.”

“I know.” Yamamoto isn’t looking at the door, not even glancing at Gokudera’s hand as he reaches into his pocket to fish out the key Yamamoto greeted him with this morning. “My dad’s going to bring over sushi later and I’ll have everything for the kitchen unpacked by tomorrow.”

Gokudera glances at him again, huffs the shape of a laugh before he looks back down to manage the lock one-handed. “I’m not completely sure that counts, Mo-chan.”

“It’s still food, right?” Yamamoto smiles, and then the door opens and they both go silent at once. Yamamoto at least has seen the apartment when he was moving his few boxes into the space, the tiny kitchen laid out against the wall and the open space that doubles as a living area and a bedroom at once. His desk is still in his old room, awaiting more energy and time to move it than he and his father could muster yesterday, but the double bed at least has made the migration. It’s the only furniture in the space, as yet, the rest of the empty room waiting the desk and Gokudera’s low table and bookshelf, but Yamamoto did tug the sheets straight to make it at least look at presentable as possible in the otherwise bare apartment.

“It really is tiny,” Gokudera says, but there’s no judgment in his tone and he’s not letting Yamamoto’s hand go as he moves forward. It’s just an observation, that voice he gets when he’s too caught up in absorbing information to collect any emotional context for his thoughts. He moves forward and pulls Yamamoto in his wake, barely glancing at the pair of pillows on the bed before he veers towards the kitchen, reaching out to brush his fingers against the stacked boxes awaiting time and energy to be unwrapped.

“I’m sorry everything’s a mess,” Yamamoto offers, anticipation of Gokudera’s reaction turning into filler words in his throat. “I’ll unpack some tonight and some tomorrow when you’re moving your things over.”

Gokudera takes a breath, shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts. When he turns back from the door leading into the closet-sized bathroom he’s looking up through his hair, the shadow of the silver only half-hiding the smirk at his lips.

“You’re ridiculous,” he declares, his hand shifting in Yamamoto’s. He’s not pulling away; it’s just movement of his fingers, his thumb shifting and palm tensing into a different shape. Yamamoto keeps watching the other boy’s face as Gokudera’s hand moves, feels out the alignment of the other’s hand by touch instead of sight. “At least we have the important part.”

Yamamoto pieces together the curl of Gokudera’s fingers, the angle of his thumb, starts to smile as he recognizes the signal. “I’m so glad you’re here, Hayato.”

Gokudera tips his head, the softness at the corners of his eyes asking for a kiss as clearly as the gesture he’s pressing into Yamamoto’s palm. “So are we going to take advantage of our new apartment, or do you want to just stand in the kitchen all day?”

Yamamoto laughs at that, the sound catching contagious at Gokudera’s mouth and breaking out in the form of a chuckle in the other’s throat, and then they both let the other’s hand go at once, reaching out over the short distance between them to step in close together. Gokudera’s fingers settle against Yamamoto’s hips, the grace of his fingertips curling against the bottom edge of Yamamoto’s new school uniform, and Yamamoto is reaching for the endless appeal of Gokudera’s hair, tangling his fingers into the silky strands and sighing satisfaction even before his lips have brushed against the soft of pleasure at Gokudera’s mouth. There’s pressure, the crush of lips against his for a moment, and then Gokudera is pulling away to purr a laugh as he backs them up across the room.

“I can’t believe you set the bed up before you unpacked the kitchen.” His grin is sharp enough to cut at the edge, catching bright in the green of his eyes, and Yamamoto can’t breathe for watching the words form at Gokudera’s lips, can’t think but to lean forward in unspoken plea for more contact. Gokudera dodges this time, leans away and glances back as they draw closer to the mattress so he can drop smoothly to the blankets. Yamamoto is less graceful about his motion; he’s just trailing Gokudera, obeying the urging of the fingers fitting in against his belt loops and toppling down until they’re both sprawled across the bed, Yamamoto more atop Gokudera than he is supported by the mattress.

“I wanted us to sleep together,” he says somewhere in the vicinity of Gokudera’s hair, slides his hand down to fit against the flushed-warm skin at the back of Gokudera’s neck. “If you wanted to stay the night here with me.”

“I bet you did,” Gokudera purrs, pushes at Yamamoto’s hip to invert their positions. Yamamoto turns, rolls over onto his back as Gokudera’s knee fits between his, and then he’s blinking up into the light from the window, his attention caught and held by the halo the sunlight is casting around Gokudera’s head. “You had no ulterior motives at all.” One of the hands at Yamamoto’s hip loosens, slides down against the outside of his thigh, and Yamamoto’s eyelashes flutter involuntarily, his throat tightens on a startled gasp of reaction.

“I wasn’t--” he starts, and Gokudera’s hand pulls in, over the top of his leg to touch the inside seam of his jeans just above his knee. Yamamoto’s breath leaves his lungs in a rush then, heat radiating out into every inch of his body, and it takes him a moment to catch himself back together. “ _Hh_. I...I didn’t want to assume, after the first day of school--”

“You thought I couldn’t handle it?” Gokudera’s hand drags higher; when Yamamoto blinks himself into focus the other boy is smirking at him, teasing and pleasure alike catching bright in the green of his eyes. “ _I’m_  not the one who needs to pay attention in class.”

“Hayato,” Yamamoto sighs, helpless to the overfast thud of his pulse, reaches up to feather his fingers against the loose ends of the other’s hair, and it’s admission that falls from his lips, unattached to any of the conversation. “I’m so glad we’re together.”

Gokudera hesitates; then his smirk cracks into laughter, the amusement curling into the corners of his eyes, and he’s ducking in close to giggle against Yamamoto’s lips. “You’re such an idiot, Mo-chan,” he says, and Yamamoto can’t decide which is more distracting, the warmth of Gokudera’s breath on his skin or the friction of the other boy’s fingers shifting up the inside of his leg. “You’re the one who always insisted we would be.”

“I know,” Yamamoto says, his hips tipping up off the bed to meet the glide of Gokudera’s fingers up against the front of his jeans. “I knew we would.” He pushes against the edge of Gokudera’s untucked shirt, rumples it up higher against the other boy’s waist, and Gokudera grins and pushes the button of Yamamoto’s jeans open.

“I did picture a bit more furniture,” he teases as he gets the zipper undone, rocks back and away from Yamamoto’s lingering hold to tug at the other’s jeans. Yamamoto pulls his hands in obediently, braces himself at the bed so he can lift his hips and let Gokudera tug his clothes off. “I mean, this is even less than a love hotel would have.”

“Sorry,” Yamamoto offers. Gokudera’s slow about pulling his jeans and boxers down, is letting more his touch and his gaze drag slow over Yamamoto’s skin until Yamamoto is flushing warm with delight, can feel the anticipation settling into a knot at the base of his spine. “I got tired last night before I was done.”

“Whatever,” Gokudera huffs, sounding resigned, but his hand is pushing back up the outside of Yamamoto’s leg, his fingertips pressing into the other’s bare hip while his eyes linger hot against the other boy’s skin. “Did you unpack the important stuff, at least?”

Yamamoto’s too distracted for a moment to answer, his attention trapped by the friction of Gokudera’s hand wandering sideways across his stomach, now, the heat of the other’s skin dragging over his. “What? I mean, there’s the bed, and some stuff for the bathroom too that I--”

“Idiot,” Gokudera says with as much affection as the word can plausibly carry. “Did you unpack the lube yet?”

“Oh,” Yamamoto says, and “ _Oh_ ,” and “One sec” and he’s wiggling away, letting his hold on Gokudera go so he can reach out over his head and fumble under the edge of the mattress. Gokudera is laughing, the amusement soft and warm by the time Yamamoto hears it, tugging at Yamamoto’s jeans to strip them completely off the other’s feet while Yamamoto is still reaching for the bottle he tucked away yesterday.

“Here,” he finally declares, closing his fingers on the familiar cool of the bottle and rolling back to offer it to Gokudera like a prize. He’s met with the beginning of a smirk and a raised eyebrow, but Gokudera accepts the bottle in any case, his smile only breaking completely free as he looks down to untwist the cap.

“You are  _ridiculous_ , Mo-chan,” he observes, and Yamamoto isn’t sure to which action Gokudera is referring specifically but it doesn’t make much difference when he can see the other’s fingers going slick as he rubs liquid across them and can feel his own blood going hotter in his veins as if in instinctive response. He’s arching up off the mattress before Gokudera reaches for him, stretching a hand out to cling to the other’s hip as he spreads his legs wider in invitation, and Gokudera drops the bottle to the sheets so he can close his hand steady and bracing against Yamamoto’s hip. “Were you thinking about this instead of paying attention in class?”

Yamamoto laughs weakly, unable to voice a denial when he’s been thinking of nothing but Gokudera here, alone, with him, in their apartment, and Gokudera grins and slides slippery fingers across Yamamoto’s skin.

“You’re going to fail all your tests,” he observes, pushing the tip of one finger just inside the other boy. Yamamoto whines against the flush of sensation, falls heavy to the blankets in capitulation to Gokudera’s control, and Gokudera pushes in deeper, easing his finger farther in as he speaks. “Moving in together is going to be terrible for your studies.”

“I passed my entrance exam,” Yamamoto offers, his fingers tightening at Gokudera’s hip to brace himself against the friction of the other’s touch. “I do better with you.”

“We’ll see,” Gokudera says, sounding skeptical, but he’s still smiling, his eyes going hotter as he looks down to watch Yamamoto’s legs tremble as he starts to shift his finger. “You’re going to study after this, okay?”

“Okay,” Yamamoto agrees. He’d agree to anything Gokudera wants, has never even wanted to resist, the less so when the other boy’s touch is pressing him open and fluttering sensation up his spine and over his skin. “Okay, I promise I will.”

“You and your promises,” Gokudera purrs, half-laughing and half-tender, and fits another finger in alongside the first. Yamamoto shuts his eyes, focuses on the tension of his breathing in his chest and the sharp edge of Gokudera’s hip under his hand, imagines he can feel the texture of Gokudera’s fingerprints dragging in against him. It’s easy to relax, between the stretch of pleasure unwinding into him and the comfort of Gokudera’s breathing over him, the deliberate care of the other’s movements so slow it’s almost teasing, anticipation rising right into the edge of anxiety under Yamamoto’s skin. Yamamoto rides out the heat, lets the waves rush out over him and tremble themselves into pleasure under his skin, until finally it’s Gokudera’s patience that frays first, the other boy who half-groans a sigh and slides his fingers free all at once.

“You’re always so  _calm_ ,” he complains as Yamamoto blinks his eyes open, tips his head down so he can watch Gokudera tug at his belt buckle to get his pants open. Yamamoto feels warmed-over, radiant and glowing with stoked-high heat even without either of them touching his cock where it’s spilling slick against the bottom edge of his shirt. “I can’t get you pleading for it.”

Yamamoto shakes his head, laughs faint in the very back of his throat. “I’m not calm,” he insists, angles his leg in against the back of Gokudera’s knee as the other boy’s jeans come open. “I’m shaking, Hayato, feel.” He lets his hand go from Gokudera’s hip, extends it so Gokudera can see the way his fingers tremble when he tries to hold them still. Gokudera glances at his hand, looks back down to Yamamoto’s cock; Yamamoto can see his throat work, the convulsive swallow before he looks back down and pushes his jeans half-off his hips.

“Move,” he growls, pushing Yamamoto’s hand aside and bracing himself with a hand over Yamamoto’s shoulder as he leans forward over the other boy. Yamamoto blinks, stares up at the delicate lines of Gokudera’s face, the familiar green of his eyes and the pout of his lips in the framework of cheekbones a little sharper than they once were, a jawline that becomes more defined with every year.

“I love you,” he says without thinking, the words slipping out over his tongue as easily as his hand comes up to tangle into Gokudera’s hair and pin it against the back of the other’s neck. “Hayato, I love you, I always have.”

Gokudera looks up at his face, his teasing smile fading into a blank stare for a moment. His eyes skim across Yamamoto’s face, linger at the dark of his hair and the corner of the other’s mouth before coming back to hold his gaze.

“You are an idiot,” he says again, soft and gentle, and then his free hand is pushing against the inside of Yamamoto’s leg, urging the other’s position more open, and Yamamoto spreads his knees as wide as he can as the heat of Gokudera’s cock fits in against him. Gokudera’s hips come forward, he starts to slide forward, and Yamamoto lets out a breath along with all the collected tension in his body as the other boy’s cock starts to stretch him open. He’s relaxing into the soft of the bed, his legs coming up around Gokudera’s waist to urge him closer, and Gokudera is falling in too, sighing hard into Yamamoto’s shoulder like he hasn’t taken a proper breath for hours.

“ _Mo-chan_ ,” and that’s so familiar it turns all their surroundings into a home, the boxes and the empty floor and the bare wall all becoming comfortable on one breath. Yamamoto turns his head, his lips catching at the fine hairs against the back of Gokudera’s neck, and he’s winding his arms around the other boy’s shoulders too, pulling him in closer as Gokudera’s hand slides up his leg to his hip instead.

“Hayato,” he breathes, faint and trembling, and Gokudera takes a choking breath against his shoulder and gasps “You feel so  _good_ ” and Yamamoto’s entire body goes hot like he’s aflame even before the fingers at his hip go sideways to close on his length. He’s pulling Gokudera in as close as he can get them, crushing their remaining clothes together like he can press them out of existence, and then Gokudera lifts his head and his mouth is against Yamamoto’s, his lips catching the whimper of want at the back of Yamamoto’s throat. He draws back to thrust in again, smoother and faster, and then his fingers tighten and stroke up and Yamamoto is shaking under him, arching in closer until he’s even breathing in time with the other boy. It’s Gokudera who pulls back from the kiss, gasping for air before Yamamoto realizes he was going light-headed, the heat of his breathing almost imperceptible over the waves of warmth spilling out over Yamamoto’s body.

“Oh,” he manages, “I’m not...I’m not going to last much longer, Hayato.”

“I know,” Gokudera pants, his fingers dragging up over Yamamoto as the rhythm of his hips starts to white out the other’s vision. “I can feel you getting close.”

Yamamoto takes a breath, lifts his head to kiss against the corner of Gokudera’s mouth. “Are you--?”

“Shut up,” Gokudera grates, the strain in his voice better answer than coherency would give. “You first, Mo-chan, I want to feel you come.”

“Ah,” Yamamoto says, and “Okay,” because he can’t say anything else, and Gokudera’s thumb slips against him and he lets the threat of inevitability catch hold in his veins. Gokudera is breathing hard against him, Yamamoto can see the tight-controlled attention in the green eyes fixed on his, and then the ache of pleasure starts to sweep up his spine and his vision slides out-of-focus, he’s arching up as close to Gokudera as he can get and gasping a huge shuddering inhale of expectation.

“ _Yes_ ,” Gokudera growls, “Yes,  _yes_ , come for me, Mo-chan,” and Yamamoto obediently trembles over the edge at the command. His hands tighten against the other boy’s shoulders, then fall slack under the upsurge of heat in his veins and out into his fingertips, and when he spills hot against Gokudera’s hand he’s gasping “ _Hayato_ ” like it’s a reflex hard-wired into his system. Gokudera’s fingers slide over him for the first few shudders of pleasure; then he’s pulling away, bracing himself next to the other’s hip, and when he ducks his head it’s to breathe with the desperate gasping rhythm of oncoming pleasure. Yamamoto shivers again, blinks himself past the first overwhelming flood of heat, and Gokudera’s head drops against his shoulder and the other boy is coming too, gasping through the arrhythmic thrusts of orgasm as the friction of his movement into Yamamoto catches and stills.

Yamamoto pulls at Gokudera’s shoulders as soon as the other boy has half-caught his breath, tugging the weight of the other down on top of him so they can turn sideways to fall to the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. Gokudera is smiling when Yamamoto pulls back enough to see, blinking himself out of any lingering sharpness and into the soft-glazed heat Yamamoto loves to see on his face.

“Hi,” Yamamoto offers pointlessly, still incoherent from the pleasure in him and smiling too wide to try to regain control over his expression. “I love you.”

Gokudera laughs at him, warmth making the sound slow and heavy, ruffles his clean hand through Yamamoto’s hair. Yamamoto ducks his head, sighs in pleasure, and Gokudera tips in close to press his lips to the other’s forehead.

“My Mo-chan,”he says, pleased and soft, and Yamamoto can hear the meaning under the words before the fingers sliding against the back of his neck fall into the shape of  _I love you_  against his skin.

Yamamoto has never felt more at home.


End file.
